Conversation partner training with spouses of persons with aphasia: A pilot study using a protocol to trace relevant characteristics

An interaction-focused intervention approach to training everyday communication partners: a single case study

“…They had been recruited to the study through Chris' SLP. Their responses in the adapted COAST questionnaires (Long et al, 2008(Long et al, , 2009) measuring perceived functional communication before taking part in the intervention showed that they both perceived their conversations as negatively affected by the aphasia and also that they believed that the behaviour of David could facilitate communication (see Saldert et al, 2013 for details about the questionnaire).…”

“…Two of the authors (the first and third) analysed the same 10-min long video recordings that had been used in Saldert et al (2013), viewing the transcripts as well as the recordings several times. They performed the qualitative analysis separately as well as together.…”

“…David and Chris took part in a pilot study examining CPT where the intervention was based on the Supporting Partners of People with Aphasia in Relationships and Conversation (SPPARC; Lock et al, 2001), a published interaction-focused intervention programme. Some findings from that study are presented in Saldert, Backman, and Hartelius (2013) (where David and Chris are referred to as "dyad 3"). In particular, in that paper, the focus was on (1) investigating what might be the relevant characteristics of the communication partners which would facilitate them in benefitting from this type of training and (2) evaluating the effects of the CPT programme by means of a questionnaire that compared the participants' perception of communicative effectiveness preintervention and postintervention, and by blinded analyses of the preintervention and postintervention conversations using a quantitative rating scale, the Measure of Interaction in Communication (MIC) (Eriksson et al, 2014;Saldert et al, 2013).…”

“…The MIC is based on Togher, Power, Tate, McDonald, and Rietdijk (2010) revised version of the Measure of Skill in Supported Conversation (Kagan et al, 2004). On this scale, David showed an improvement in his ability to support conversation after the intervention as measured in terms of the percentage of nonoverlapping data statistics (see Saldert et al, 2013 for further details of scoring procedures and results). This improvement was still present at the follow-up stage 12 weeks after the intervention and was also reflected in both participants' reported perceptions of their communication as elicited by adapted versions of the Communication Outcome After Stroke (COAST) questionnaires (Long, Hesketh, & Bowen, 2009;Long, Hesketh, Paszek, Booth, & Bowen, 2008).…”

“…In particular, in that paper, the focus was on (1) investigating what might be the relevant characteristics of the communication partners which would facilitate them in benefitting from this type of training and (2) evaluating the effects of the CPT programme by means of a questionnaire that compared the participants' perception of communicative effectiveness preintervention and postintervention, and by blinded analyses of the preintervention and postintervention conversations using a quantitative rating scale, the Measure of Interaction in Communication (MIC) (Eriksson et al, 2014;Saldert et al, 2013). As reported in Saldert et al (2013), the three-grade rating scale gives a quantitative global measure of the communication partner's performance. The MIC is based on Togher, Power, Tate, McDonald, and Rietdijk (2010) revised version of the Measure of Skill in Supported Conversation (Kagan et al, 2004).…”