Interaction during Intervention: Conversations between professionals and children with cerebral palsy
Abstract
To develop interactional ability, conversation with both peers and adults is vital. However, for children with physical impairments, like cerebral palsy, interactions with adults often dominate. In this study, interaction between eight Swedish children with cerebral palsy, mean age 8;6 years, and their physiotherapists (PTs) and speech-language therapists (SLTs) was analysed during intervention across 16 dyads. The analysis of data focused on how quantitative, interactional and topical dominance was manifested by the PTs and the SLTs. In addition, mitigating strategies and use of feedback was investigated. Surprisingly, the only significant finding was in topic maintenance, where the PTs’ conversations were more directed towards topics unrelated to the intervention context when compared to the conversations of the SLTs. Although not significant, the PTs tended to dominate by having a greater amount of talk, and the SLTs by asking many questions. It is discussed how the two professions may contribute to the development of interactional skills and pragmatic ability among children with cerebral palsy, given their professional training and focus of intervention.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Communication & Medicine
Volume 6 • Number 1 • 2009
Pages: 49 - 60
History
Published online: 13 July 2009
Published in print: 2009
Keywords
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Related Content
Citations
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
Download article citation data for:
Communication & Medicine 2009 6:1, 49-60
Communication & Medicine 2009 6:1, 49-60