Using the concepts and principles of conversation analysis (CA), this paper examines the everyday unscripted spontaneous conversations between 4 boys who communicate with the aid of a speech-generating device (SGD), and their mothers. The analyses focused on describing the conversationalists' various actions in aided turn-transition processes resulting in a 33-part turntransition structure used to accomplish aided turn initiation. Despite the challenges to conversational progress, the participants did not consider the slow conversational speed a challenge. Both the mothers and their children were orientated to progression of the aided conversation by creating interaction practices to achieve successful turn-transitions. By understanding the structural characteristics of fluent aided conversations, it may be possible to develop communication strategies and device features that promote fluent interactions.

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This article examines the professional practices of a speech and language therapist in triadic interaction with children with cochlear implants and their parents. The study aims to provide a more detailed picture of three-party therapy interaction and to describe shifts in participation during the therapy process. Speech and language therapy sessions were video recorded and examined using conversation analysis. The focus of the analysis was on co-operation between the therapist, the parent and the child in triadic task sequences. The analyses showed how the participation and roles of the therapist and the parent changed during the therapy process. The participatory roles changed from therapist-driven task interaction to shared practices between the therapist and parent, and finally lead to parent-driven task interaction. The study reveals the real-life practices of speech and language therapy and introduces the ways in which parents are involved in therapy.

Aided communicators often have an opportunity to express themselves with speech-generating devices (SGDs) that produce symbol by symbol (SBS) and/or pre-stored (PS) utterances. Studies on the usage of PS utterances report that these utterances affect conversations positively, but it appears that aided communicators and professionals may have divergent views on their benefits. The aim of this study is to analyse how school-aged aided communicators, their mothers, peers, and speech and language therapists (SLTs) co-construct the social actions of PS utterances during their everyday interactions. The theoretical framework of this study is conversation analysis. This approach to analysing the data enhances our understanding of the linguistic and temporal resources of PS utterances and how they are used to reinforce various rich social actions that promote the progress of aided conversations to resemble natural spoken conversations. The results of this study will help SLTs and teachers in their planning content for SGDs as well as in teaching, and guiding aided communicators and their partners to utilize PS utterances in combination with SBS utterances during their conversations.

This study examines lexical intervention sessions in speech and language therapy for children with cochlear implants (CIs). Particular focus is on the therapist's professional practices in doing the therapy. The participants in this study are three congenitally deaf children with CIs together with their speech and language therapist. The video recorded therapy sessions of these children are studied using conversation analysis. The analysis reveals the ways in which the speech and language therapist formulates her speaking turns to support the children's lexical learning in task interaction. The therapist's multimodal practices, for example linguistic and acoustic highlighting, focus both on the lexical meaning and the phonological form of the words. Using these means, the therapist expands the child's lexical networks, specifies and corrects the meaning of the target words, and models the correct phonological form of the words. The findings of this study are useful in providing information for clinicians and speech and language therapy students working with children who have CIs as well as for the children's parents.