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Narrative Discourse Treatment Development
Sponsor: VA Office of Research and Development
Summary
Discourse impairments are breakdowns in meaningful communication beyond the level of single sentences and have a functional impact on the lives of Veterans with TBI, disrupting return to work, communication re integration, socialization, and quality of life. The few prior attempts to treat discourse impairments have been small case studies and resulted in no change or limited gains. The proposed study evaluates the feasibility of a novel narrative discourse treatment that builds upon these prior attempts by addressing breakdowns in both story content and story organization using a theoretically-driven approach. If feasible, as demonstrated by tolerability and acceptability to participants, and later shown to be effective, the proposed discourse treatment has the potential to improve daily communication, which provides a gateway for Veterans with TBI to increase meaningful participation and improve functioning in major life domains.
Official title: Remediating Narrative Discourse Impairments in Veterans With TBI: Initial Treatment Development
Key Details
Gender
All
Age Range
18 Years - Any
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Enrollment
34
Start Date
2023-11-27
Completion Date
2026-09-30
Last Updated
2026-01-16
Healthy Volunteers
No
Interventions
Narrative discourse treatment
The protocol will incorporate elements from prior treatment studies that showed some promise: 1) hierarchical training, 2) variety of discourse stimuli, 3) development of skills and strategies for discourse processing, 4) structured training prompts, 5) meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic strategies, and 6) integration of learning principles. Novel treatment elements will include: 1) targeting both story content and story organization, 2) use of a discourse model to guide treatment, and 3) functional communication training. Treatment will be delivered twice a week over 8 weeks. There will be four treatment phases: education, story organization, story content, and integration of story organization and content.
Locations (1)
VA Connecticut Healthcare System West Haven Campus, West Haven, CT
West Haven, Connecticut, United States