Written discourse of adolescents with closed head injury.

Written discourse of adolescents with closed head injury (CHI) was compared to that of normal controls. It was expected that the writing of adolescents with CHI would be disordered on one or more of the eight measurements used (productivity, efficiency, lexical, incomplete, or elliptic cohesion, global or local coherence, and maze use). Eight adolescents with closed head injury and matched controls provided written descriptions of a pictured activity. Analysis using t-tests indicated that adolescents with CHI used fewer words to express each idea in writing (p = 0.05), and that the relationship between successive ideas was rated as less than that of controls (p = 0.002). Implications are that written as well as oral discourse should be assessed after CHI. Writing is a more controlled process than speaking; and, therefore, may be used clinically to structure the development of ideas after CHI.