Editorial Putting communication disorders in context after traumatic brain injury

In this editorial, the importance of context in communication after traumatic brain injury (TBI) is discussed. Context is defined in a number of ways including the socio-cultural background of the individual, the specific social context of any given communicative setting and the cognitive context of the individual including their prior knowledge and coexisting cognitive deficits. Each of these is covered elsewhere in this special issue of Aphasiology and mentioned perfunctorily here. In addition, however, it is argued that social perception, the ability to read social contextual cues, while critical to language competence is an area that has received relatively little attention in the research literature. However there is evidence that TBI individuals have problems understanding paralinguistic information (e.g. tone of voice), non-verbal cues (e.g. facial expression) and contextual information (e.g. relationship between speakers). The potential role of cognitive disturbances in producing such deficits is briefly considered.