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Cohesion in oral discourse of Mandarin-speaking adults with traumatic brain injury: Report of pilot data on story telling

Kenny Mok1, Anthony Pak Hin Kong2* and Kai-Yan Dustin Lau1
  • 1 The Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR China
  • 2 University of Central Florida, United States

Background The literature reporting the use of cohesive markers in discourse production among English-speakers with traumatic brain injury (TBI) have focused on the amount and types of cohesive devices produced. Apart from reduced amount of cohesive tie production (e.g., Carlomagno et al., 2011; Davis & Coelho, 2004), TBI narratives have been reported to contain a higher percentage of ellipsis and incomplete cohesive ties (e.g., Mentis & Prutting, 1987). According to a recent review by McDonald et al. (2013), the degree of cohesion in TBI discourse production can be affected by a number of factors, such as discourse task, severity of TBI, and cognitive integrity of TBI patients. Owing to typological features that are different from English, Chinese (as a pro-drop language in which sentential meaning is frequently recovered from context instead of overt linguistic forms) has unique characteristics of cohesive devices to achieve inter-sentential cohesion (Halliday & Webster, 2009). This paper aimed to explore how well existing measures of impaired discourse cohesion can be applied to Mandarin Chinese. Methods Eighteen subjects with a single closed-head TBI with a post onset time of at least four months were recruited. Language samples were collected and orthographically transcribed using the Chinese AphasiaBank protocol (see Kong et al., 2015) modified for TBI. Each sample was segmented into elementary discourse units (EDUs), which is the minimal semantic building blocks of a discourse (Mann & Thompson, 1988). Degree of cohesion on the story telling task was subsequently quantified on three aspects: (1) cohesive adequacy ratio, obtained based on the distribution of EDUs with cohesive ties that were “Complete,” “Incomplete,” or “Error/ Ambiguous”; (2) accuracy and error rate of cohesive marker usage, and (3) distribution of types of accurately used cohesive markers, including reference markers (i.e., identity of the thing or class of things being referred to in the preceding or following text; Liles et al., 1989), synonyms (or identical lexicons), conjunctions (such as those indicating additive, temporal, causal, or adversive relationships) and , ellipsis for topic-chain, etc. Results and Discussion Preliminary results based on six TBI subjects suggested that the average number of EDUs was 13. Percentage of “Complete,” “Incomplete,” and “Error/ Ambiguous” cohesive ties was 42.5%, 32.5%, and 25%, respectively. Ratio of accurate cohesive markers usage (per EDU) was found to be 0.40, which was close to the erroneous ratio of 0.43. In addition, the most commonly used cohesive marker was conjunction (51.61%), followed by ellipsis (29.03%), and reference (e.g., pronouns, demonstratives, and classifiers) and lexical (e.g., synonyms or antonyms) makers (19.35%). Further analyses involving additional narrative tasks (including sequential picture descriptions, procedurals, and monologues) as well as comparison between TBI and controls are in progress. Details in the modifications necessary to accurately and adequately highlight the cohesive markings in Chinese will also be discussed.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dr. Jie Zhu and clinicians in the Speech Therapy Department of the Guangdong Work Injury Rehabilitation Hospital (Guangzhou, China) for their help in subject recruitment and testing.

References

Carlomagno, S., Giannotti, S., Vorano, L., & Marini, A. (2011). Discourse information content in non-aphasic adults with brain injury: A pilot study. Brain injury, 25(10), 1010-1018.
Davis, G.A., & Coelho, C.A. (2004). Referential cohesion and logical coherence of narration after closed head injury. Brain and Language, 89(3), 508-23.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Webster, J. J. (2009). Bloomsbury companion to systemic functional linguistics. A&C Black.
Kong, A. P. H., Law, S. P., Kwan, C. C. Y., Lai, C., & Lam, V. (2015) A coding system with independent annotations of gesture forms and functions during verbal communication: Development of a database of speech and GEsture (DoSaGE). Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 39(1), 93-111.
Liles, B. Z., Coelho, C. A., Duffy, R. J., & Zalagens, M. R. (1989). Effects of elicitation procedures on the narratives of normal and closed head-injured adults. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 54(3), 356-366.
Mann, W. C., & Thompson, S. A. (1988). Rhetorical structure theory: Toward a functional theory of text organization. Text, 8(3), 243-281.
McDonald, S., Togher, L., & Code, C. (2013). Social and communication disorders following traumatic brain injury. Psychology Press.
Mentis, M., & Prutting, C. A. (1987). Cohesion in the discourse of normal and head-injured adults. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,30(1), 88-98.

Keywords: TBI, discourse, cohesion, Storytelling, Mandarin Chinese

Conference: 54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting, Llandudno, United Kingdom, 16 Oct - 18 Oct, 2016.

Presentation Type: Poster Sessions

Topic: Student Submissions

Citation: Mok K, Kong A and Lau K (2016). Cohesion in oral discourse of Mandarin-speaking adults with traumatic brain injury: Report of pilot data on story telling. Front. Psychol. Conference Abstract: 54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2016.68.00047

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Received: 25 Apr 2016; Published Online: 15 Aug 2016.

* Correspondence: Dr. Anthony Pak Hin Kong, University of Central Florida, Orlando, United States, akong@hku.hk