The collaborative construction of non‐serious episodes of interaction by non‐speaking children with cerebral palsy and their peers

Abstract

Inequality in communicative resources available to non‐speaking children with cerebral palsy in comparison with their ‘naturally’ speaking co‐participants has material consequences for the ways in which face‐to‐face interaction is organized. Analyses of interaction involving non‐speaking children with physical disability and speaking adults has often interpreted the patterns of interaction observed as indicative of non‐speaking children's apparent passivity in interaction. Research concerned with these children's interactions with their peers has shown evidence of non‐speaking children's active engagement in episodes of interaction characterized by, for example, shared laughter and heightened affect. The analysis presented here utilizes the principles and practices of Conversation Analysis (CA) to examine how non‐speaking children with cerebral palsy and their peers bring about and organize episodes of non‐serious interaction. In so doing the analysis reveals how non‐speaking children are demonstrably active in developing the interaction as non‐serious, and how both children collaborate in constituting the non‐speaking child as playfully naughty.

• Disability
• children
• cerebral palsy
• peer interaction
• conversation analysis

Notes

1. Tina has been provided with a 128 location Delta Talker^™ voice output communication aid. Tina uses a switch scanning method to operate her VOCA employing two switches mounted in the headrest of her wheelchair which she operates with the sides of her head. By activating a switch she can initiate automatic row and column scanning of the 128 icon interface. When the row in which the target symbol is illuminated, she can begin an automatic scanning procedure of each item in that row by activating the switch again. When the individual target cell is highlighted she may trigger it by hitting her head switch again. A bleep is heard each time a new row or individual cell is highlighted by the scanning procedure, or a symbol is activated. If a row, or set of columns, is not selected after three passes the procedure will stop. One consequence of this procedure is that VOCA bleeps, which indicate the movement of scanning lights on the interface, may sound continually when Tina is not necessarily actively operating her device for speech.