• Sarah J Tlustos, C-Y Peter Chiu, Nicolay Chertkoff Walz, H Gerry Taylor, Keith Owen Yeates, and Shari L Wade.
• Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.
• J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2011 Nov 1;17(6):1132-42.

AbstractA growing body of literature has documented evidence for emotion labeling (EL) deficits after traumatic brain injury (TBI); however, long-term effects of TBI on EL abilities, particularly among young children, are unclear. We investigated EL abilities and socio-emotional outcomes in 32 children with moderate-severe TBI, 23 with complicated-mild TBI, and 82 children with orthopedic injuries (OI), shortly after injury and at 18 months post-injury. All children were between 3:0 and 6:11 years of age at the time of injury. Repeated measures analyses indicated that all groups showed improved EL performance between acute and 18-month assessments, but that the moderate-severe TBI group improved at a slower rate than the OI group, so that the two groups showed significantly different performance at 18 months. Emotion labeling ability did not significantly contribute to the prediction of socio-emotional outcomes after controlling for pre-injury functioning. These results provide preliminary evidence of emerging EL deficits after early childhood TBI that are related to injury severity but that do not predict social and behavioral outcomes.

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