Browsing by Author "Henriksson, Joanna"

Background: Aphasia changes one’s communication. The most common symptoms of aphasia include difficulties finding words. When a person acquires aphasia, they often need to learn new ways to communicate to support themselves when their speech is impaired. Gestures are a common way to aid communication in people with aphasia. Purpose: In this Master’s Thesis we look at the use of gaze and hand gestures in people with aphasia during word retrieval. The goal of this study is to find out which types of gesture are used and how the gestures are timed. Methods: This study was completed under the COMPAIR project. COMPAIR is a research program that focuses on atypical communication. The annotation program ELAN and an annotation template used by the COMPAIR project were utilized in this study. The material for this study consisted of everyday conversations between four people with aphasia and people close to them. There was also video material where one of the participants performed on Boston Naming Test. There were four participants in this study. Half (n=2) of them presented with fluent aphasia and the other half (n=2) with non-fluent aphasia. The total duration of the taped conversations was 144 minutes. Results: The participants of this study showed varying amounts and types of gesture. Every participant had a type of gesture that was the most typical for them. Most used gestures were descriptive and pointing gestures, gaze shift during word retrieval and touching own body. Most of the use of gesture happened during the word retrieval phase where the participants attempted to find the missing word and made several initiations to repair their speech. Conclusions: People with aphasia have unique ways of using gestures in their communication and therefore it is not possible to draw definite conclusions of general rules of gesture use in aphasia from a sample size this small. However, all of the participants used some type of gesture in support of their word retrieval so it seems that gaze and hand gestures can an important mean to aid impaired communication.