Questioning in conversations before and after communication partner training for individuals with traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Background: Social communication training involving individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and their everyday communication partner(s) facilitates improvements in the quality of their interactions and information transfer. Recent research has indicated that the ways conversation partners use questions may play an important role in this improvement.

Aims: This study aimed to describe questioning patterns during casual conversations before and after communication partner training using Conversation Analysis.

Methods & Procedures: Samples of casual conversations involving four individuals with TBI and their everyday communication partners were examined. These samples were collected before and after intervention in the course of a larger clinical trial investigating the efficacy of a communication partner training program entitled TBI Express. Four dyads were chosen based on their Adapted Kagan Scale scores; a primary outcome measure in the clinical trial. Two dyads with the greatest change on these scales (“Kagan plus”) and two dyads with the least change (“Kagan neutral”) were selected. Approximately 10 minutes of casual conversations per dyad were transcribed in detail. Questions in each sample were identified and analysed qualitatively using conversation-analytic practices, focusing on aspects of sequence organisation.

Outcomes & Results: “Kagan plus” dyads had obvious changes in their questioning practices following training. These changes facilitated selection of topics and the development of related talk, i.e., improved communication. Conversely, the “Kagan neutral” dyads exhibited less obvious differences in their questioning practices after training, which meant that improved communication in the postintervention samples was less apparent.

Conclusions: The present study provides detailed insight into how everyday communication partners’ questioning practices contribute to communicative success. This information has the potential to help clinicians assess and improve interactions involving individuals with TBI and their everyday communication partners.

Keywords:

• traumatic brain injury
• communication partner training
• questions
• discourse analysis
• conversation analysis

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Corrigendum

Acknowledgements

We thank all of the participants for their contributions. Additionally we thank the staff at the Sydney metropolitan brain injury units for assistance with the larger study.

Notes

1. Topic talk is a common activity in conversation that involves interactants discussing matters of personal salience (see Schegloff, 2007). This is distinct from topic, which we will use to refer to the particular matters—the content—that interactants talk about.

2. All names used in this paper are pseudonyms.

3. As the interaction continues, it can be seen that Jean is trying to elicit a specific response from Melanie: that the coffee Jean is drinking is in fact a cappuccino. At line 54, she produces a test question to obtain such a response.

Additional information

Funding

This trial was supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council project grant [NHMRC Project Grant 402687].