Service provider attitudes regarding conversational rule violations in three public settings

Abstract

Previous research identified an attitudinal hierarchy of conversational tradeoff choices among public service providers involving utterance-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems in a bookstore context. The purpose of the current research was to determine if there was a hierarchy of choices in three additional settings (i.e., movie theater, convenience store, hair salon), if these hierarchies would be the same, and if there were attitude differences in terms of participant gender and that of the person using AAC. In each of two experiments, 80 service providers viewed scripted, video-recorded conversations between a customer using AAC and a nonvisible provider in each setting, and completed an attitude questionnaire. A hierarchy of tradeoffs was found in each setting, although not the same hierarchy. No gender differences were found. As in the bookstore, messages with repetitive information were consistently rated the highest, messages with partly relevant information were consistently rated the lowest and messages with a delay in delivery were consistently rated in the middle of the hierarchies across the current settings, while messages with either inadequate or excessive information were more context-sensitive. The findings may direct individuals in message choice selections that yield the most positive evaluations by service providers and in designing technology to optimize these choices.

Keywords:

• Adults with complex communication needs
• attitudes
• augmentative and alternative communication
• hierarchy of conversational rule violations
• public service settings

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Dallas Johnson, Meghan Widerberg, Nicole Tannor, Malia Mertz, Lauren Choi, and the participants of the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Communicator 5 is a product of Tobii Dynavox, Pittsburgh, PA, www.tobiidynavox.com/en-US/software/windows-software/communicator-5/.

2 Compass is a product of Tobii Dynavox, Pittsburgh, PA, www.tobiidynavox.com/en-US/tags/discontinued-software/compass-1/.

3 Pathfinder is a product of Prentke Romich Company, Wooster, OH, www.prentrom.com/our-history.

4 TextAloud is a product of NextUp Technologies, LLC, Clemens, NC, https://nextup.com.

5 NeoSpeech is a product of Neospeech Hoya Company, Santa Clara, CA, https://neospeech.com/.

6 Dell Inspiron 9400 is a product of Dell Technologies, Round Rock, TX, https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/inspiron-9400/docs.

7 Panasonic CT27SX10 is a product of Panasonic Canada Inc., Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

8 Panasonic DVD-S1 is a product of Panasonic Canada Inc., Middissauga, Ontario, Canada.

9 M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 is a product of Avisoft Bioacoustics EK, Glienicke/Nordbahn, Germany; https://www.avisoft.com/MicroTrack.pdf.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health (5 R01 DC003570-06).