Barbara Kelly

A usability framework for speech recognition technologies in clinical handover: A pre-implementation study

A multi-disciplinary research team is undertaking a trial of speech-to-text (STT) technology for clinical handover management. Speech-to-text technologies allow for the capture of handover data from voice recordings using speech recognition software and systems. The text documents created from this system can be used together with traditional handover notes and checklists to enhance the depth and breadth of data available for clinical decision-making at the point of care and so improve patient care and reduce medical errors. This paper reports on a preliminary study of perceived usability by nurses of speech-to-text technology based on interviews at a “test day” and using a user-task-technology usability framework to explore expectations of nurses of the use of speech-to-text (STT) technology for clinical handover. The results of this study will be used to design field studies to test the use of speech-to-text (STT) technologies at the point of care in several hospital settings.

Reproducible research in linguistics: A position statement on data citation and attribution in our field

Abstract This paper is a position statement on reproducible research in linguistics, including data citation and attribution, that represents the collective views of some 41 colleagues. Reproducibility can play a key role in increasing verification and accountability in linguistic research, and is a hallmark of social science research that is currently under-represented in our field. We believe that we need to take time as a discipline to clearly articulate our expectations for how linguistic data are managed, cited, and maintained for long-term access.

Linguistic diversity in first language acquisition research: Moving beyond the challenges

The field of first language acquisition (FLA) needs to take into account data from the broadest typological array of languages and language-learning environments if it is to identify potential universals in child language development, and how these interact with socio-cultural mechanisms of acquisition. Yet undertaking FLA research in remote field-based situations, where the majority of the world’s languages are spoken and acquired, poses challenges for best-practice methodologies assumed in lab-based FLA research. This article discusses the challenges of child language acquisition research in fieldwork contexts with lesser-known, under-described languages with small communities of speakers. The authors suggest some modified approaches to methodology for child language research appropriate to challenging fieldwork situations, in the hope of encouraging more cross-linguistic acquisition research.

Trends in Indigenous Language Usage

There has been substantial research into trends in maintenance and shift of community languages among Australian migrants; however, similar studies for Indigenous language usage in Australia are scarce. Studies of language maintenance and shift have tended to focus on language shift across specific languages. In this paper, we report on a study based on census data to identify reports of Indigenous language usage across three census periods; 2001, 2006 and 2011. The study examines the linguistic distribution of Indigenous language groups and identifies changes in numbers of speakers of specific Indigenous languages over the last inter-censal period. It then investigates language use on the basis of the age and gender distribution of Indigenous language speakers. We conclude with a discussion of the motivations for some of the changes observed in the language landscapes of Indigenous languages in Australia.

Language and understanding of cardiopulmonary resuscitation amongst an aged inpatient population

Abstract Greater patient involvement in health decision-making requires exchange of information between the patient and the healthcare professionals. Decisions regarding healthcare at the end of life include consideration of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The stated objectives of this study were to determine how often language around concepts of resuscitation is used in the community by examination of the English language corpora (ELC); to explore the understanding of the same language by a group of older hospital patients; and to determine the patients’ knowledge of the process and success of CPR, as well as the sources of their information. Medical inpatients aged 75 years and older were surveyed to this end in the setting of a tertiary university teaching hospital. Interrogation of the Australian, British and American English Corpora was accomplished by a linguist, and a questionnaire and semi-structured interview were administered to ascertain patient knowledge. We demonstrated that although medical inpatients have some familiarity with terms relating to resuscitation, there is a lack of understanding of the context, process and outcomes of CPR. The predominant sources of information were television and print media. Examination of the ELC revealed a paucity of the use of terms related to resuscitation. This finding indicates that physicians have a duty of care to determine patients’ understanding around resuscitation language, and terms used, in discussions of their preferences before assuming their engagement in shared decision-making. More open public discussion around death and resuscitation would increase the general knowledge of the population and would provide a better foundation for the discussions in times of need.

Finding Common Ground: Sign Language and Gesture Research in Australia

This issue of AJL emerged from a workshop on issues in ‘nonverbal’ research held at the Australian Linguistics Society conference in Canberra in 2011. The workshop examined a range of issues inherent in analytic work on gesture, sign languages and, more generally, multimodal analysis. It brought researchers working on gesture and sign languages together with the goal of highlighting the differences and commonalities across differing theoretical perspectives and research domains. The aim was to search for common ground between Australian researchers with interests in diverse but related fields and it was, in fact, the very first time that Australian sign language and gesture specialists had come together in a forum of this kind. This collection of papers represents an important milestone for AJL: it is the first issue of the journal to include papers on Auslan (the natural sign language of the Australian deaf community) and on Indigenous Australian sign languages. The fields of gesture and sign language studies are both burgeoning areas in linguistics. It is now increasingly accepted that the study of co-speech gestures will lead to a greater understanding of human communication and cognition (Özyürek 2012). Gesture appears to occur whenever hearing individuals are communicating in face-to-face spoken interactions (Kendon 2004). Importantly, as Holler et al. (2011) point out, studies of co-speech gesture over the last two decades have shown conclusively that gesture is tightly integrated with the spoken message on the semantic, pragmatic and temporal levels during production (e.g. McNeill 2000) and comprehension (e.g. Kelly et al. 2010). Gesture studies are just as crucial for an understanding of the structure and use of sign languages, as both gesture and sign languages are expressed in the same visual-corporal channel. The properties that distinguish sign languages from co-speech gesture may, in fact, be those that represent core properties of language. Studies have shown that some of these properties begin to emerge when non-signers are asked to gesture without speech Australian Journal of Linguistics, 2014 Vol. 34, No. 2, 185–192, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2014.887404

Indigenous children's language: Acquisition, preservation and evolution of language in minority contexts

A comprehensive theory of language acquisition must explain how human infants can learn any one of the world’s 7000 or so languages. As such, an important part of understanding how languages are learned is to investigate acquisition across a range of diverse languages and sociocultural contexts. To this end, cross-linguistic and cross-cultural language research has been pervasive in the field of first language acquisition since the early 1980s. In groundbreaking work, Slobin (1985) noted that the study of acquisition in cross-linguistic perspective can be used to reveal both developmental universals and language-specific acquisition patterns. Since this observation there have been several waves of cross-linguistic first language acquisition research, and more recently we have seen a rise in research investigating lesser-known languages. This special issue brings together work on several such languages, spoken in minority contexts. It is the first collection of language development research dedicated to the acquisition of under-studied or little-known languages and by extension, different cultures.

Revisiting Significant Action and Gesture Categorization

As the field of gesture studies has developed researchers have created ways of analysing and categorizing bodily movement phenomena. In this paper we look at whether gesture categorizations have any resonance with the ways that people other than gesture researchers approach bodily movement. Building on Kendons observations that people generally have a consistent attitude towards what constitutes ‘significant action’, we asked 12 participants to conceptualize their own categories of gesture and then analyse a short video that contained a predetermined variety of bodily movements. We found that non-analysts had a wider conception of what constituted gesture than analysts. In regards to the categorizations of gesture that non-analysts made, there were a range of schemas, which we broadly categorized as being ‘form-based’ and ‘function-based’.