Language in Trauma: A Pilot Study of Pause Frequency as a Predictor of Cognitive Change Due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

With the rise of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among adults in the United States, understanding the processes of trauma, trauma related disorders, and the long-term impact of living with them is an area of continued focus for researchers. This is especially a concern in the case of current and former military service members (veterans), whose work activities and deployment cycles place them at an increased risk of exposure to trauma-inducing experiences but who have a low rate of self-referral to healthcare professionals. There is thus an urgent need for developing procedures for early diagnosis and treatment. The present study examines how the tools and findings of the field of linguistics may contribute to the field of trauma research. Previous research has shown that cognition and language production are closely linked. This study focuses on the role of prosody in PTSD and pilots a procedure for the data collection and analysis. Data consist of monologic talk from a sample of student-veterans and analyzed with speech software (Praat) for pauses greater than 250 milliseconds per 100 words. The pause frequency was compared to a PCL-5 score, an assessment used to check for PTSD symptoms and evaluate need for further assessment and possible diagnosis of PTSD. This pilot study found the methods successfully elicited data that could be used to measure and test the research questions. Although the findings of the study were inconclusive due to limitations of the participant pool, it found that the research model proved effect as a model for future linguistic research on trauma.