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likelihood and extent of communication breakdown. These actions included avoiding negative or difficult communi- cation situations, accepting Mandy’s communication errors, and using other forms of interaction with which Mandy felt more confident, such as online chat. Although this study identified part of the impact of social communication impairment for Mandy, the limitations of the research must be acknowledged. This study involved only one adolescent, her mother, and her friend. Thus, while the experiences of participants in this study may resonate with other adolescents with TBI and their significant others, the current findings cannot be generalised to other people in this population. Another limitation was that participants were not interviewed individually. Although this was the wish of Mandy, Vivienne, and Bridget, the joint interviews could have impacted upon the degree to which they felt comfortable giving open and honest responses. Neither the literature nor the participants in this study identified strategies for developing effective social communication skills that allowed Mandy to be more self-aware and in control of her communication, such as learning to be more attentive, to recognise the effects of fatigue on her interactions, and to better interpret what someone was saying. Rather, the strategies used by study participants focused on avoiding or ignoring the impairment. Contemporary literature that addresses social communication training post-TBI focuses on communication partner training (see for example Togher, McDonald, Tate, Power & Reitdjik, 2013); however, findings of this study suggest that a hybrid approach that targets individual coping and conversation repair skills as well as communication partner skills could be useful. Mandy and her communication partners may benefit from developing and implementing strategies that improve her communicative abilities in collaborative verbal interactions, particularly as these abilities may be necessary as she grows older, leaves her school and home environment, and has to communicate with a broad range of people. The findings of this research provide insight into the impact of having a social communication deficit post-TBI, and highlight the tendency of Mandy and her parents/ friends to avoid or ignore her deficit rather than work on strategies to improve her communication abilities. The study findings add credence to the small amount of literature that discusses social communication impairment in adolescents post-TBI. The limited strategies identified and used by Mandy, her mother, and friend further highlight the need for clinicians to identify social communication impairment in adolescents with TBI and assist the adolescent, their family, and friends to develop effective strategies to maintain and support everyday conversations. The case study presented illustrates the need for therapeutic interventions that increase an individual’s ability to recognise and repair communication breakdown, and that provide communication partners with strategies that can be used to maintain conversational flow. Such an approach will help ensure that Grice’s (1975) conversational maxims are maintained. As the period of adolescence is fraught with social and relationship demands, any support rehabilitation professionals can provide to manage social communication impairment should be implemented. References Anderson, V., Beauchamp, M., Rosema, S., & Soo, C. (2013). A theoretical approach to understanding social dysfunction in children and adolescents with TBI. In S.

McDonald, L. Togher, & C. Code (Eds.), Social and communication disorders following traumatic brain injury . Hove, UK: Psychology Press. Anderson, V., Catroppa, C., Morse, S., Haritou, F., & Rosenfeld, J. (2009). Intellectual outcome from preschool traumatic brain injury: A 5-year prospective longitudinal study. Pediatrics , 124 (6), 1064–1071. Babbage, D. R., Yim, J., Zupan, B., Neumann, D., Tomita, M. R., & Willer, B. (2011). Meta-analysis of facial affect difficulties after traumatic brain injury. Neuropsychology , 25 (3), 277–285. Bogart, E., Togher, L., Power, E., & Docking, K. (2012). Casual conversations between individuals with traumatic brain injury and their friends. Brain Injury , 26 (3), 221–233. Burnett, S., Sebastian, C., Cohen Kadosh, K., & Blakemore, S. (2011). The social brain in adolescence: Evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging and behavioural studies. Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews , 35 , 1654–1664. Byom, L. J., & Turkstra, L. (2012). Effects of social cognitive demand on theory of mind in conversations of adults with traumatic brain injury. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders , 47 (3), 310–321. Ciccia, A., & Turkstra, L. S. (2002). Cohesion, communication burden, and response adequacy in adolescent conversations. International Journal of Speech- Language Pathology , 4 (1), 1–8. Curtin, M., & Fossey, E. (2007). Appraising the trustworthiness of qualitative studies: Guidelines for occupational therapists. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal , 54 , 88–94. Douglas, J. M., Bracy, C. A., & Snow, P. C. (2007). Measuring perceived communicative ability after traumatic brain injury: Reliability and validity of the La Trobe Communication Questionnaire. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation , 22 (1), 31–38. Finlay, L., & Gough, B. (2003). Reflexivity: A practical guide for researchers in health and social sciences . Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons. Forgas, J. P., Vincze, O., & László, J. (Eds.) (2013). Social cognition and communication . New York: Psychology Press. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (Vol. 3, pp. 41–58). Retrieved from http://www.sfu.ca/~jeffpell/ Cogs300/GricsLogicConvers75.pdf Hawley, L. A., & Newman, J. K. (2010). Group interactive structured treatment (GIST): A social competence intervention for individuals with brain injury. Brain Injury , 24 (11), 1292–1297. Im-Bolter, N., Cohen, N. J., & Farnia, F. (2013). I thought we were good: Social cognition, figurative language, and adolescent psychopathology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry , 54 (7), 724–732. Johnson, R., & Waterfield, J. (2004). Making words count: The value of qualitative research. Physiotherapy Research International , 9 (3), 121–131. Kelly, M., McDonald, S., & Kellett, D. (2013). The psychological effects of ostracism following traumatic brain injury. Brain Injury , 27 (13–14), 1676–1684. Kleinke, S. (2010). Speaker activity and Grice’s maxims of conversation at the interface of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. Journal of Pragmatics , 42 , 3345–3366.

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