Participants’ Dynamic Orientation to Folder Navigation when Using 
a VOCA with a Touch Screen in Talk-in-Interaction

Abstract

This paper reports on a conversation-analysis case study of interaction between a child with cerebral palsy and an adult using a computer-based voice output communication aid (VOCA) device with a touch-sensitive screen-input system. Data was collected from video recordings of everyday activities at school. The public nature of the VOCA-mediated turn construction process (hand movements towards the screen, on-screen folder navigation, synthetic speech) displays the projection of the turn under way and its possible continuations. The adult interlocutor orients to such projections when contributing to the topic of the ongoing turn and when initiating repair on its topical development. Contributing may activate the AAC user's further involvement in the ongoing turn, while repair may restrict the AAC user's influence on the topical progression. The findings are relevant for clinical assessment and intervention.

Teachers' Demonstrations of Epistemic Access in Teacher-Student Interactions in a Digital Setting

“…Similarly, Van Charldorp investigated the use of the computer during police interrogations in which epistemics plays an interesting role as well (Van Charldorp 2011;Van Charldorp, 2013). For teacher-student interaction, one only comes across a study of an interaction between a student with cerebral palsy and an adult using a specialized digital communication device (Norén, Svensson & Telford, 2013).…”

Caregivers’, teachers’, and assistants’ use and learning of partner strategies in communication using high-tech speech-generating devices with children with severe cerebral palsy

“…It requires a lot of skill and effort from the individuals involved as it is a co-construction between the nonspeaking child (i.e. child with severe speech motor disorder) and the typically speaking person (Hörmeyer & Renner, 2013;Norén, Svensson, & Telford, 2013). By using the SGD with the communication partner, the child may develop linguistic, strategic, social, and operational competencies (Light & McNaughton, 2014), which are also valuable competencies in communication with an SGD.…”

The structure of participants’ turn-transition practices in aided conversations that use speech-output technologies

“…After the partner notices the pre-beginning of the aided speaker's utterance composition, they may wait in silence or produce co-occurring talk (Clarke et al, 2013;Higginbotham et al, 2016). These delays make the turn-transitions of aided conversations vulnerable to co-occurring talk as well as other parallel conversations and activities by the partner, which can impact the trajectory and outcome of the conversation (Clarke & Wilkinson, 2010;Noren, Svensson, & Telford, 2013;Sundqvist, Plejert, & Ronnberg, 2010).…”

“…The shared access to the device display as well as the ongoing utterance composition may promote the partner's use of guessing, question asking, and commenting about the current composition (Clarke & Wilkinson, 2010;Noren, Svensson et al, 2013). In fact, the occurrence of symmetrical participation patterns that resemble those of spoken conversations is relatively uncommon and is dependent on whether the interlocutor is willing and/or able to make time for the aided speaker to complete their compositions (Batorowitz et al, 2014;Clarke et al, 2013;Higginbotham et al, 2016;Noren, Svensson et al, 2013;Sundqvist et al, 2010).…”

“…To summarize the current literature, the research on aided turn-transitions in aidedconversations involving children has focused on identifying and evaluating the pre-beginning (Sigurd Pilesjö, 2013), the completing of an aided turn (Clarke et al, 2013) and the co-occurring talk of partners (Noren, Svensson et al, 2013) during turn-transition. However, few studies have focused on how young aided communicators and their partners contribute to the progress of turntransition by matching their actions.…”