LSLT: Kelly Marshall (HESP)

Set shifting in conversational discourse

Abstract: This presentation will address a set of studies that are currently in development/a work in progress. Conversation is a complex task, subserved by many component processes. While typically thought of as a linguistic skill, many of the component processes may be related to domain-general cognitive abilities. In non-conversation tasks, set shifting refers to the ability to shift between components of a hierarchical representation of the ongoing task (e.g., goals and subgoals of an action plan; categories and category exemplars). Discourse also has a hierarchical structure of topics and subtopics. Although topic shifts are inherent to conversational discourse, they have not been studied in the context of set shifting. These studies aim to investigate whether topic shifting during conversation induces behavioral and neural characteristics of domain-general set shifting in healthy adults, whether these patterns differ in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) who have deficits related to set shifting in other tasks, and how manipulations known to affect set shifting impact behavioral and neural responses during conversation in both populations.