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Abstract
Background: Low-tech visual scene displays (VSDs) combine contextually rich pictures and written text to support the communication of people with aphasia. VSDs create a shared communication space in which a person with aphasia and a communication partner co-construct messages.
Aims: The researchers examined the effect of low-tech VSDs on the content and quality of communicative interactions between a person with aphasia and unfamiliar communication partners.
Methods & Procedures: One person with aphasia and nine unfamiliar communication partners engaged in short, one-on-one conversations about a specified topic in one of three conditions: shared-VSDs, non-shared-VSDs, and no-VSDs. Data included discourse analysis scores reflecting the conceptual complexity of utterances, content unit analyses of information communication partners gathered from the interaction, and Likert-scale responses from the person with aphasia about his perception of communicative ease and effectiveness.
Outcomes & Results: Comparisons made across conditions revealed: (a) the most conversational turns occurred in the shared-VSDs condition; (b) communication partners produced utterances with higher conceptual complexity in the shared-VSDs condition; (c) the person with aphasia conveyed the greatest number of content units in the shared-VSDs condition; and (d) the person with aphasia perceived that information transfer, ease of conversational interaction, and partner understanding were best in the shared-VSDs condition.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that low-tech VSDs have an impact on the manner and extent to which a person with aphasia and a communication partner contribute to conversational interactions involving information transfer.
The authors thank David Beukelman, Aimee Dietz, and Miechelle McKelvey for their comments and support regarding the performance of this research. This research was supported in part under Grant #H113#980026 from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), U.S. Department of Education. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of NIDRR or the Department of Education.