Rimke Groenewold

Direct speech constructions in aphasic Dutch narratives

Background: Previous studies have shown that individuals with aphasia are usually able to produce direct reported speech constructions. So far these studies have mainly been conducted in English. The results show that direct speech is beneficial for aphasic speakers for various reasons. In Dutch the construction goes along with a grammatical characteristic that makes it attractive for aphasic speakers. This study examines the diffuse phenomenon of direct speech in narratives of Dutch individuals with and without aphasia. Aims: The purpose of this study is to assess the use of direct speech in the semi-spontaneous speech of Dutch individuals with aphasia. The question is whether this construction, which is highly communicative, is used by aphasic speakers and in which forms it becomes manifest. In addition the effect of the nature of the underlying disorder, (i.e., grammatical versus lexical), is assessed. Methods & Procedures: A total of 61 transcripts of individuals with aphasia (n = 31) and 146 transcripts of non-brain-damaged speakers (n = 88) were analysed. The question of how the forms and relative frequencies of direct speech constructions differ across tasks and subgroups is addressed. For this purpose the relative frequencies of direct speech are determined and compared within and between tasks and subgroups. In addition different forms of the phenomenon are distinguished and categorised based on the patterns found in the data. Outcomes & Results: Individuals with aphasia use direct speech significantly more often than non-brain-damaged speakers. Individuals with Brocas aphasia exhibit a preference for direct speech constructions without a reporting verb, whereas individuals with anomic aphasia predominantly produce instances of direct speech that do include a reporting verb. Even though all subgroups produce direct speech constructions, the frequencies and forms vary across tasks and subgroups. Conclusions: Both groups make use of various forms of direct speech but the frequencies and distributions over categories are different. A possible explanation for the greater production of direct speech by aphasic speakers is its strategic utilisation to get around grammatical problems and word-finding difficulties. There is a quantitative difference between the individuals with anomic aphasia and the control speakers, whereas the difference between the individuals with Brocas aphasia and the control group is qualitative in nature. An explanation for the dissimilarities between the aphasic subgroups is the difference in grammatical complexity between subtypes of direct speech constructions.

The effects of direct and indirect speech on discourse comprehension in Dutch listeners with and without aphasia

Background: Research on language comprehension in aphasia has primarily focused on comprehension of isolated words and sentences. Even though previous studies have provided insights into comprehension abilities of individuals with aphasia at the word and grammatical level, our understanding of the nature and extent of their language comprehension (dis)abilities is not yet complete. In contrast to the highly restricted semantic and syntactic interpretation of sentences, discourse comprehension requires additional pragmatic and non-linguistic skills. Aims: The purpose of this study was to assess language comprehension in individuals with and without aphasia at the discourse level. In particular, it addressed the question of whether the use of direct speech, compared to indirect speech, affects comprehension of narrative discourse in Dutch aphasic and non-brain-damaged (NBD) listeners. Methods & Procedures: The Direct Speech Comprehension (DISCO) test was developed to examine the effects of manipulating direct vs. indirect speech on discourse comprehension. Twenty-three individuals with aphasia and 20 NBD participants were presented with spoken narratives that contained either direct or indirect speech reports. The narratives were presented audio-visually on an iPad, and comprehension was assessed with yes/no questions. Outcomes & Results: The performance of the participants with aphasia was significantly poorer than that of the NBD participants. Moreover, a main effect for condition type was found, indicating that narratives with direct speech reports were better understood than narratives with indirect speech reports by listeners with and without aphasia. There was no interaction between group and condition type indicating that this main effect held for both the aphasic and the NBD listeners. However, for the participants with aphasia, there was an interaction between condition and Token Test error score indicating that the positive effect of direct speech constructions diminishes for individuals with poorer comprehension. Conclusions: Direct speech constructions facilitate language comprehension in listeners with and without aphasia. One explanation for this finding is the occurrence of additional “layers” of communication, such as intonation and facial expression, often accompanying direct speech constructions. An alternative account is the degree of grammatical complexity: In Dutch, the syntactic construction of indirect speech requires embedding, whereas in direct speech the introductory sentence and the quote are both main clauses. The finding that the beneficial effect of direct speech on language comprehension diminishes for individuals with severe aphasia may indicate that the DISCO is too difficult for them to reveal an effect of a subtle manipulation such as that of condition type.

The effects of enactment on communicative competence in aphasic casual conversation : a functional linguistic perspective

Abstract Background Previous research has shown that speakers with aphasia rely on enactment more often than non‐brain‐damaged language users. Several studies have been conducted to explain this observed increase, demonstrating that spoken language containing enactment is easier to produce and is more engaging to the conversation partner. This paper describes the effects of the occurrence of enactment in casual conversation involving individuals with aphasia on its level of conversational assertiveness. Aims To evaluate whether and to what extent the occurrence of enactment in speech of individuals with aphasia contributes to its conversational assertiveness. Methods & Procedures Conversations between a speaker with aphasia and his wife (drawn from AphasiaBank) were analysed in several steps. First, the transcripts were divided into moves, and all moves were coded according to the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) framework. Next, all moves were labelled in terms of their level of conversational assertiveness, as defined in the previous literature. Finally, all enactments were identified and their level of conversational assertiveness was compared with that of non‐enactments. Outcomes & Results Throughout their conversations, the non‐brain‐damaged speaker was more assertive than the speaker with aphasia. However, the speaker with aphasia produced more enactments than the non‐brain‐damaged speaker. The moves of the speaker with aphasia containing enactment were more assertive than those without enactment. Conclusions & Implications The use of enactment in the conversations under study positively affected the level of conversational assertiveness of the speaker with aphasia, a competence that is important for speakers with aphasia because it contributes to their floor time, chances to be heard seriously and degree of control over the conversation topic.

A multimodal analysis of enactment in aphasia

Background: Enactment is a discourse phenomenonwherein a speaker employs direct speech and/or other behaviour such as gesture, body movement, and/or prosody to depict aspect(s) of a reported scene or event. Enactment is an identified communicative resource in people with aphasia (PWA) (Wilkinson, Beeke, & Maxim, 2010). Previous studies have suggested that the use of enactment allows PWA to exploit residual non-verbal and paralinguistic skills while employing simpler syntactic structures (Groenewold, Bastiaanse, & Huiskes, 2013). To date, the co-occurrence of verbal, paralinguistic, and non-verbal components of communication and the exact way(s) in which they complement each other from an interpersonal perspective have rarely been studied in aphasia. This study is a first application of systematic multimodal analysis (Stec, 2016) of everyday interaction in aphasia, using enactment as a focus. Aims: This study addresses the following research questions:

The differential effects of direct and indirect speech on discourse comprehension in Dutch and English listeners with and without aphasia

Background: In a previous study, we demonstrated that narratives containing direct speech constructions were easier to comprehend than narratives with indirect speech constructions for Dutch listeners with and without aphasia. There were two possible explanations for this finding: either that direct speech has increased liveliness compared to indirect speech or that direct speech is less grammatically complex. Aims: This study aimed to provide further insight into the mechanisms underlying the differences between direct and indirect speech constructions on discourse comprehension in Dutch. More specifically, it aimed to examine the role that the grammatical characteristics of direct and indirect speech play in discourse comprehension success by comparing English- and Dutch-speaking individuals with and without aphasia. Methods & Procedures: An English version of the Dutch iPad-based Direct Speech Comprehension (DISCO) test was developed. Twenty individuals with aphasia and 19 neurologically healthy control participants were presented with spoken narratives that contained either direct or indirect speech constructions. Their performance was compared to that of the participants of the Dutch DISCO study. To assess the effect of language on performance, we conducted a single analysis in which we contrasted the English data with the Dutch data. Outcomes & Results: Control participants performed better than participants with aphasia; English-speaking participants performed worse than Dutch participants, and narratives containing direct speech were easier to comprehend than narratives with indirect speech constructions. However, a subsequent analysis including only individuals with aphasia showed that the Dutch group differed from the English-speaking group: direct speech was only beneficial for the Dutch participants with aphasia. Conclusions: This study expanded on the findings of a previous study, in which a facilitating effect of direct over indirect speech constructions for audiovisual discourse comprehension was found. The differential effects of direct speech on comprehension in Dutch and English showed that rather than one or other explanation being “correct”, both liveliness and grammatical characteristics play a role in discourse comprehension success. Grammatically less complex constructions (direct speech) are not necessarily always easier to comprehend than grammatically more complex constructions (indirect speech) for individuals with aphasia. In our study grammatically simple constructions introduced grammatical ambiguity and therefore possible interpretation difficulties for the English-speaking participants with aphasia.