Everyday Talk: Its Role in Assessment and Treatment for Individuals With Aphasia

Abstract

This article discusses the significance of conversation in current clinical practice with individuals with aphasia and their conversation partners. It explores the nature of everyday talk, and provides an overview of how studies to date have examined the conversations of individuals with aphasia and have provided some promising treatment avenues. It also proposes another framework, Speech Function Analysis, that may assist further in incorporating conversational principles into the therapy context. The framework provides a system network for examining speech functions in dialogue, while considering the effects of both lexical and syntactic limitations, and context. Examples of conversations between three individuals with aphasia and their partners are used to illustrate the analysis. The authors suggest that further knowledge of both aphasic speakers' and their partners' interactions as well as clinician–client interactions may increase our insights into this area, and make authentic and meaningful conversation more accessible in the clinical situation and beyond.

Impairment‐ and activity/participation‐directed interventions in progressive language impairment: Clinical and theoretical issues

“…This is equally an issue in non-progressive aphasia (Turner & Whitworth, 2006) and quantitative and qualitative measures of functional communicative success developed for people with aphasia (e.g., Armstrong & Mortensen, 2006), dementia (e.g., Lubinski & Orange, 2000), and traumatic brain injury (Togher, McDonald, Code, & Grant, 2004) could all be adapted for use with people with progressive language impairment. Work is just beginning in this area with people with progressive language impairment.…”

What ‘form’ does informal assessment take? A scoping review of the informal assessment literature for aphasia

“…Several of the conversation studies highlight the different ways in which people with aphasia may display their aphasia in everyday, naturalistic contexts compared with those that are more artificial (e.g., Beeke et al . , Armstrong and Mortensen , Hesketh et al . , Herbert et al .…”

“…For conversation, family members (Armstrong and Mortensen , Herbert et al . ) and unfamiliar people (Armstrong et al .…”

Conversation therapy for aphasia: a qualitative review of the literature

“…Conversation has been described as the heart of human communication (Armstrong and Mortensen , Clark and Wilkes‐Gibbs ). It is critical for exchanging information, maintaining social relationships, negotiating a sense of self and managing emotional health.…”