Browsing by Subject "puhelaite"

Aim. In conversation mutual understanding is achieved through co-operation of each participant. Mutual understanding might be more at risk in conversation where one or more participants use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). To be able to support people who use AAC and guide their communication partners, interventionists should understand how communication problems and challenges are being resolved in a natural conversation. The aim of this study is to describe how participants orient to problems in AAC conversation. Conversation partners' other-initiations of repair and the problems these initiations indicate are being studied. Method. The database consists of two videotaped conversations where one aided speaker, a 15-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, talks with a speech-language pathology student (conv 1) and with his speech-language pathologist (conv 2). The data was originally videotaped for speech therapy follow-up. Problems and how they were managed were studied using conversation analysis (CA) and one of its basic organizations, repair organization. CA enables detailed examination of natural interaction. Results and conclusions. Almost every other-initiation of repair fell upon the problems in aided speaker's turn and were initiated by conversation partners. These problems related broadly to speech understanding, more precisely to understandability of utterances. No problems of hearing were raised. Reasons underlying the trouble sources were most often conversation partner's difficulty in understanding the meaning of aided speaker's whole turn or part of a turn, extra words or other mistakes in selecting symbols, or vague reference. From all the conversation partners' other-initiations of repair interpretative means, candidate understandings, were used most often and the initiations of repair were at the same time pointing a problem and trying to resolve it. Interpretation seemed to be explicitly on display in both conversations. It was used to show understanding of AAC turn and to initiate repair. In order to be able to understand how to support AAC users' human agency and active participation in conversation, more research needs to be done on different conversations.