UMD’s own Kelly Marshall will share new work on how eye-tracking can reveal real-time language processing challenges in people with traumatic brain injury. The talk highlights why higher-level language skills like conversation, topic-shifting, and communication in noisy environments can remain difficult long after injury, and how visual-world methods can deepen both research and clinical practice.

Title: Tracking Real-time Discourse Comprehension in Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract: Many individuals who have had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) experience long-term disability related to higher-level language deficits (e.g., having conversations, social interactions, communicating in adverse conditions like noise). In this talk, I will describe how we can use eye tracking measures to understand some of the cognitive mechanisms underlying these persistent difficulties and will discuss the need for real-time measures of higher-level language processing. I will present results from projects using visual-world eye tracking to examine difficulties understanding moment-to-moment changes in conversation topics in civilian and military patients with TBI. Considerations and challenges for conducting this research program and impacts on clinical applications and signal analysis methods will be discussed.