Browsing by Subject "institutionaalinen keskustelu"

Objectives. The ability to detect and to resolve disturbances of interaction is an important conversational skill. In the field of conversation analytic research, the practices of repairing troubles of speaking, hearing and understanding are known as repair sequences. Individuals with Alzheimer's disease have growing difficulties to recognize their own linguistic deficiencies and to understand the interactional intensions of others. As the disease progresses, the repair initiations made by the demented individuals decrease, and their healthy conversation partners are given a central role in maintaining mutual understanding. Using conversation analytic approach, this qualitative research describes repair sequences caused by different kinds of conversational trouble sources in institutional group conversations between individuals with middle to late-stage Alzheimer's disease and their healthy conversation partners. Methods. The database of the study consisted of videotaped meetings of a conversation group held by speech and language pathology students in a day care center for demented people. Two individuals with middle to late-stage Alzheimer's disease and 15 healthy conversation partners took part in the study. Four group meetings from both demented individuals were chosen for the analysis. The conversation sessions were transcribed using conversation analytic conventions. Repair initiators and the attempts to repair following them were used to identify the repair sequences caused by the troubles of speaking of the individuals with Alzheimer's disease. Every repair sequence was then analysed according to the type of the trouble source and the progression of the repair. Results and conclusions. Three main trouble source categories were recognised from the conversations. The most common trouble type resulting in repair was problems of the content of the language while problems of the form and the use of language were less prominent. The lexico-semantic troubles of the content of the language, such as word finding problems, were dealt with collaborative but often ineffective repair efforts. Repair sequences dealing with troubles of the form of the language (e.g. phonological paraphasias and morpho-syntactic distortions) were quick and successful self-initiated self-repairs, whereas the responsibility of clarifying wider troubles with language use was left solely to the healthy conversation partners. The results of this study emphasise healthy conversation partners' active role in maintaining mutual understanding while conversing with individuals with Alzheimer's disease.