This is a continuing education course I completed to increase my competency of pragmatic deficits in the adult population. This course reviewed Right Hemisphere Damage (RHD), apragmatism, social cognition, assessment, treatment, and clinical considerations. RHD can lead to deficits in attention, memory, executive function, awareness, discourse, social skills, and prosody. Unfortunately, pragmatic screenings for these individuals often fall through the cracks, leaving caregivers to report concerns with eye contact, greetings, prosody, empathy, behavior, and personality. Individuals with RHD often struggle with apragmatism, placing strain on their relationships and social interactions. It may be challenging for these individuals to understand and convey humor, sarcasm, non-literal language, tone, and non-verbal language like facial expressions. Those with RHD often have egocentric and tangential discourse. It is important that these pragmatic deficits are assessed, as these pragmatic skills are important to functional communication. Treatment should utilize 1:1 and group sessions that involve behavior modification, modeling, feedback, and generalization. Treatment may involve identifying communication breakdowns, understanding figurative language, perspective-taking, and role-playing social scenarios. Approaches like Attentive Reading and Constrained Summarization (ARCS) can be helpful in targeting topic maintenance. General cognitive therapy to target attention, memory, and executive function is another important element to support pragmatics. Lastly, caregiver and family education and training are crucial in the treatment of those with RHD. This course enhanced my understanding of the pragmatic deficits associated with RHD, the importance of assessing these skills, and the potential treatment options for this disorder. 

Magee, K. (2023). Pragmatics and social cognition: clinical considerations for adults. SpeechPathology.com. Article 20638. Available at www.speechpathology.com