Speech Change after Traumatic Brain Injury

Principal Investigator:
Thomas Campbell, PhD

Background:
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a significant public health problem in adults and children. Previous research has documented that children with TBI show problems in many aspects of communication skills. However, the area of speech has not heretofore been studied systematically.

Project:
This project is a longitudinal descriptive study of children ages 1 to 9 years old following TBI. Children are followed on a monthly basis as soon as they begin speaking after the injury. We monitor the speech sounds they produce as well as their speech intelligibility. We compare their progress to children developing typically. We are particularly interested in differences in the speech recovery of these children based on the age at which the injury occurred as well as the amount of cortical damage.