Verbosity with retelling: Narrative discourse production in temporal lobe epilepsy

To examine micro- and macrolinguistic underpinnings of circumstantiality in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), we examined the elicited narrative output of 15 individuals with TLE and 14 controls. To replicate and extend Field and colleagues’ (2000) work, participants were asked to produce five immediately consecutive elicitations of an eight-frame cartoon “Cowboy Story” (Joanette et al., 1986). Following transcription and coding, detailed multi-level discourse analysis demonstrated a typical pattern of compression in controls. The narratives produced by individuals with TLE were less fluent, cohesive, and coherent across trials: producing fewer novel units and more repetitive and extraneous content. Significant group by trial interactions in sample length, spontaneous duration, and statements, were not explained by seizure burden, age, or lexical retrieval deficits. These findings suggest that they do not benefit from repeated engagement with a narrative in the same manner as controls. Disturbed social cognition and pragmatics in TLE might underpin communication inefficiencies.