Browsing by Author "Rantakangas, Tuula"

Aims. Verbal apraxia might occur with aphasia. Apraxia may impact on person`s ability to be in talk-in-interaction with. Little is known about how apraxia of speech might influence talk-in-interaction and a person`s use of gestures. Even the less is known how these communication strategies will change by time. In addition, a person with apraxia must find new communication strategies. To help a person with apraxia of speech to communicate better with their significant others there is a need for information: how one can support a person with verbal apraxia the most effective way. The aim of this study is to explore how the sequential organization of conversation is constructed with a person with apraxia of speech and non-fluent aphasia and a speech therapist and how gestures are used by person with verbal apraxia for one year. Methods. The participant was a 78-year-old woman who had a verbal apraxia and aphasia. The qualitive data consisted of 3 videotaped conversations with person with apraxia and non-fluent aphasia and a speech therapist (58 minutes, 50 seconds of raw data). The data was collected for one year. Focus of the analysis was on changes in the conversation organization and the use of semiotic resources in conversation for one year. The method of conversation analysis is utilized in this study. Results and conclusions. The qualitive analysis in this study showed that conversation between the speakers were typically consisted of `hint and guess` sequences. The first data (videotaped 3 weeks after the stroke) revealed that the participant was almost speechless and her use of gestures was fussy. The lack of speech and fussy gesturing made her utterances difficult to understand and conversation consisted of long negotiation turns. After six months, the participant`s utterances and the use of gestures were more detailed and she showed more active role in interaction. After one year, the participant`s utterances and gestures were even more detailed. According to these improvements, the length of negotiation turns decreased and conversation started to go along more fluent. The way how the participant used iconic gestures and pantomime were different when comparing to other studies. One potential hypothesis is that the apraxia might influence negatively one's ability to use gestures for compensatory strategies. According to these results, it is important to research more about apraxia and talk-in-interaction.