Browsing by Author "Jokela, Katri"

Aim. Compared to spoken conversations, achieving mutual understanding may be more at risk when one or more participants use aided communication. An aided communicator may take a passive role in conversations and may not have adequate strategies to repair conversational breakdowns when they occur. The aim of this study was to describe how an aided communicator may attempt to solve the problems he encounters in conversations with his speaking communication partners. Aided communicator’s repair strategies, causes of breakdowns and partners’ influence on repair phenomena were studied. This study may help professionals to acknowledge the threats that compromise achieving mutual understanding in aided conversations and recognize some of the strategies in overcoming potential communication disrupts. Method. Within the framework of data driven qualitative analysis this case study examined videotaped conversations, where an 11-year-old boy using communication book communicated with his mom, teacher and peer. The data was originally videotaped as a part of the international research project Becoming an Aided Communicator. Data driven analysis was considered as an appropriate method for studying a topic with limited previous research. Results and conclusion. Almost all of the aided communicator’s repairs were self-initiated self-repairs and the rest were other-initiated self-repairs. The former occurred mostly as responses to the partner’s misinterpretations and operational difficulties while the latter followed requests for clarifications. Aided communicator repaired by repeating or modifying his utterances or by adding new elements to the original utterance. For repairs he utilized nonverbal modalities: gaze, gestures and actions. In some exchanges, he changed modality. Reasons for the misinterpretations and requests for clarifications emerged from the linguistic limitations of the graphic communication system and partner’s difficulty in understanding the aided communicator’s nonverbal communicative acts. Operational challenges seemed to be related to partner’s experience with using communication aids that affected the fluency of communication. Partners’ varying familiarity with aided communication seemed to affect the need to repair and the effectivity of repair. In addition, the shared competence of the dyad influenced achieving mutual understanding. For the best results of support and guidance, speech and language therapists should emphasize finding out the communicator’s individual strategies in repair as well as effective practices to use a communication book. This could be implemented by video-based observations.