Who Said What? Sampling Conversation Repair Behavior Involving Adults with Acquired Hearing Impairment

ABSTRACT

Aural rehabilitation techniques provide clinicians with a range of intervention strategies to address the impact of acquired hearing impairment on everyday conversation. Although clinicians rely on assessment of speech reception abilities in the clinic and self-report of the effects of intervention on conversation and psychosocial issues, they do not currently possess techniques by which they might directly assess changes in everyday conversational behavior following intervention. This article reports on studies that have sampled conversation behavior, particularly patterns of repair, as a basis for such direct assessment. These studies provide initial evidence of the potential for clinical assessment of conversation behavior as a direct method for evaluating the outcome of conversation-based aural rehabilitation techniques. This article reviews research into the assessment of repair in conversations involving adults who have acquired hearing impairment (HI). The article uses conversation analysis as the guiding methodology and theory to address acquired HI as a communication disorder. The ways in which conversation may be disrupted by an acquired HI are described, and the conduct and limitations of current technological and conversation-based rehabilitation for this population are discussed.

KEYWORDS

Conversation - repair - conversation analysis - aural rehabilitation - speech reception - discourse

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0 In this article, the term conversation is used to denote the occurrence of everyday spoken interaction occurring for purposes other than narrative, institutional, or procedural discourse. Further, unless otherwise stipulated, the discussion of conversational activities will be limited to those occurring between pairs (or dyads) of native adult speakers of English. Also, acquired hearing loss is distinguished from prelingual hearing loss. Individuals who present for rehabilitation services with either acquired or prelingual hearing losses require very different rehabilitation services, and this article focuses specifically on the nature and effects of acquired hearing impairment on conversation.