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When interacting with people with aphasia, communication partners use a range of subtle strategies to scaffold, or facilitate, expression and comprehension. The present article analyses the unintended effects of these ostensibly helpful acts. Twenty people with aphasia and their main communication partners (n = 40) living in the UK were video recor...
Citations
... Scaffolding has been used beyond child development in the fields of learning disabilities [70], cognitive therapies [71] and communication support in aphasia [72]. In VESFA, the concept of scaffolding is used in the conversation groups via activities of stepped complexity. ...
Purpose:
Stroke research Priority Setting Partnerships identified a need for interventions that address wellbeing and communication. This paper outlines the development of a communication and wellbeing intervention for delivery in the virtual world, EVA Park, for people with aphasia called Virtual Elaborated Semantic Feature Analysis.
Materials and methods:
The Medical Research Council framework for developing complex interventions was followed to combine evidence (literature review), underpinning theory (semantic processing theories, framework for situated language use and learning theories) and involvement with stakeholders (four people with aphasia and three speech and language therapists) in an intervention that addresses word finding, situated language and wellbeing.
Results:
Evidence for the semantic word interventions and situated conversation interventions was synthesised. Theory underpinning the proposed intervention included Hebbian learning, the hub and spokes model of semantic processing, semantic spreading activation theory, the framework for situated language use and learning theories. Stakeholders with aphasia identified intervention content, an acceptable intervention regimen and gave feedback on a taster session. Speech therapists advised how the intervention could be implemented in clinical practice.
Conclusion:
Virtual Elaborated Semantic Feature Analysis is a user-informed, theory-based complex aphasia intervention that is expected to improve word finding, word use in situated conversation and wellbeing.
... LLM chat seems to be a reasonably useful autonomous tutor. One concern was that access to an AI tutor at any point could serve as too much help, sometimes labeled the "Scaffolding Paradox" (Gillespie and Hald, 2017). Instead of grappling with problems, iterating through solutions, and learning from errors-a crucial cycle in developing programming acumen-students may shortcut this process by seeking immediate answers from AI, thereby steepening their learning curve in the long run. ...
... At the beginning of April 24th, 8,762 students enrolled in the class. However, we don't want to offer access to ChatGPT too early because some empirical work in education showed that providing too many hints too early might hurt a student's learning progress (Gillespie and Hald, 2017). We determine a student to be "active" by looking at whether they have completed all Week 1 assignments. ...
Large language models (LLMs) are quickly being adopted in a wide range of learning experiences, especially via ubiquitous and broadly accessible chat interfaces like ChatGPT and Copilot. This type of interface is readily available to students and teachers around the world, yet relatively little research has been done to assess the impact of such generic tools on student learning. Coding education is an interesting test case, both because LLMs have strong performance on coding tasks, and because LLM-powered support tools are rapidly becoming part of the workflow of professional software engineers. To help understand the impact of generic LLM use on coding education, we conducted a large-scale randomized control trial with 5,831 students from 146 countries in an online coding class in which we provided some students with access to a chat interface with GPT-4. We estimate positive benefits on exam performance for adopters, the students who used the tool, but over all students, the advertisement of GPT-4 led to a significant average decrease in exam participation. We observe similar decreases in other forms of course engagement. However, this decrease is modulated by the student's country of origin. Offering access to LLMs to students from low human development index countries increased their exam participation rate on average. Our results suggest there may be promising benefits to using LLMs in an introductory coding class, but also potential harms for engagement, which makes their longer term impact on student success unclear. Our work highlights the need for additional investigations to help understand the potential impact of future adoption and integration of LLMs into classrooms.
... However, familiar caregivers lacked confidence when implementing these communication aids. This may be due to their decreased awareness of scaffolding their communication intervention focussing on the residual language functioning of the person (Gillespie & Hald, 2017). ...
Purpose: Limited clinical and research evidence is available to support healthcare practitioners in the communication assessment and intervention of persons who are minimally conscious. This study placed a specific focus on the multimodal communication strategies familiar caregivers of persons who are minimally conscious observed, as well as the verbal and the nonverbal communication strategies they employed to build communication capacity. This may inform clinical practice as it provides valuable autobiographical information as well as familiar stimuli that may elicit responses from persons in a minimally conscious state.
Method: A descriptive qualitative design employing in-depth semi-structured interviews with familiar caregivers was utilised to address the purpose of the study.
Result: Familiar caregivers reported that they used both nonverbal and verbal communication strategies to obtain a response from persons who are minimally conscious. These caregivers also reported that these persons appeared to rely on nonverbal communication strategies to express 36 different communication functions.
Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, it is clear that caregivers can be beneficial to persons who are minimally conscious, if they are able to observe and capitalise on naturally occurring multimodal communication strategies and functions. This study emphasises that familiar caregivers respect and value the dignity of persons who are minimally conscious and want to improve their communication capacity, but often lack confidence in their own communication skills.
... Conversation analysis provides an analytic framework capable of identifying interlocutors' conversational practices that influence agency. Previous studies show how aphasia affects conversational practices related to collaborative storytelling and the resulting distribution of agency by analyzing domains such as sequence organization, turn design, turn-taking organization, epistemic authority, and accountability (Barnes, Candlin, and Ferguson, 2013; Barnes and Ferguson, 2012;Beeke, Maxim, and Cooper, 2011;Gillespie and Hald, 2017;Simmons-Mackie and Kagan, 1999;Wilkinson, 1999). The present study aims to identify practices that further a PWA's agency by analyzing the organization of collaborative storytelling in a multiparty face-toface interaction. ...
... The accountability of a PWA may be negatively affected by the fact that the interlocutor sometimes needs to intervene in the turn space, in order to repair aphasia-related problems (Laakso and Klippi, 1999;Milroy and Perkins, 1992;Samuelsson and Hydén, 2017). As Gillespie and Hald (2017) point out, joint accountability might threaten a PWA's independent accountability. While collaboration with a PWA to construct sequences using, for example, scaffolding techniques supports sequence development, it discloses the PWA's inability to construct a sequence independently. ...
... In contrast to previous studies in which a PWA's accountability is considered at risk (Barnes and Ferguson, 2012;Gillespie and Hald, 2017), we show how a PWA's individual and joint accountability (together with his spouse) can be successfully established. Our analysis of a multiparty interaction reveals that the story recipients (Ruth and Christian) both align to each single teller (Tim and Julia, respectively), and also to the two as co-tellers. ...
Introduction: This study explores practices employed by a person with aphasia (PWA) and his wife to organize collaborative storytelling in a multiparty interaction. We identify practices that further the PWA’s agency – his impact on action – while he is telling a story together with his wife. Method: Using conversation analysis (CA), we carried out a case study of a successful storytelling sequence involving a 39-year-old man with anomic aphasia during a conversation with friends. Analysis: The PWA contributed to the storytelling by initiating the story sequence and by producing short but significant utterances in which he provided essential information and displayed epistemic authority. The spouse aligned with the PWA’s initiated actions and supported his agency by giving him room to speak, for example, by gaze retraction. Discussion: The analysis offers insight into practices that allowed this PWA to achieve agency. Our findings show that communication partner training could benefit from implementing activities such as collaborative storytelling.
... L'intervention orthophonique auprès des proches ne vise pourtant pas à en faire des intervenants, mais plutôt à leur proposer d'utiliser certaines stratégies qui leur permettent de continuer à remplir leur rôle de proche significatif d'une personne ayant des difficultés de communication. À titre de comparaison, des études menées auprès de personnes aphasiques et leurs proches ont souligné que si le fait de modeler le langage ou la parole de son proche ayant des difficultés à communiquer peut promouvoir l'autonomisation, cela peut aussi avoir l'effet inverse en créant une dynamique de domination, en plus de mettre l'accent sur la déficience (Gillespie & Hald, 2017;Simmons-Mackie & Damico, 2008). Afin ...
Les bénéfices observés chez les adultes qui reçoivent un implant cochléaire montrent une importante variabilité, particulièrement chez les personnes qui présentent une surdité prélinguistique. Il existe toutefois très peu de connaissances sur l’expérience de l’implant cochléaire chez ce groupe de personnes et les recherches de nature qualitative qui explorent également le vécu des proches de ces personnes sont rares. Pour obtenir davantage de données sur ces deux situations, sept personnes sourdes porteuses d’un implant et six proches significatifs ont participé à des entrevues individuelles portant sur leur perception des bénéfices et des limites de l’implant cochléaire. Les témoignages recueillis permettent de découvrir l’expérience vécue par les personnes porteuses d’un implant et leurs proches, notamment en ce qui a trait à la découverte des sons environnementaux et aux relations familiales. Les résultats de cette étude exploratoire mettent de l’avant des bénéfices qui vont au-delà du gain auditif et qui permettent de mieux comprendre l’impact de cette technologie.
... Over-estimating one's own helpfulness is understandable, since it protects the positive identity of the perceiver and brings their self-perception into line with their ideal Self as presented in the research. However it could lead to seeing less validity in the claims made by autistic people that such efforts toward them are not helpful; or, due to the paradoxical effects of helping (or even perceiving that one is being helpful: Gillespie and Hald, 2017), this bias may even lead to expectations that autistic people should be grateful. ...
Research on how autistic people are perceived by neurotypical people indicates that disclosing a diagnosis leads to a positive discriminatory bias; however, autobiographical autistic accounts indicate that diagnostic disclosure often results in negative discriminatory behavior. We report on an exploratory study to compare people’s self-reported helping behavior with their actual helping behavior toward an assumed autistic collaborator. We led 255 participants to believe that they were interacting online with a real person to play Dyad3D, a maze navigation game where players must work together to open doors, and complete the levels. However, participants were actually playing with an artificial confederate (AC) that is programmed to behave the same way across all interactions. This design enabled us to manipulate the diagnostic status of the AC that participants received prior to collaboration across three conditions: no disclosure, dyslexia-disclosure, and autism-disclosure. We use this method to explore two research questions: (1) is Dyad3D viable in creating a simulated interaction that could deceive participants into believing they were collaborating with another human player online? and (2) what are the effects of disclosing an autism diagnosis on social perception and collaboration? Combined with a post-game questionnaire, we compared differences between diagnostic conditions and differences between self-reported behavior and actual behavior in the game. Our findings show that Dyad3D proved to be an efficient and viable method for creating a believable interaction (deception success rate >96%). Moreover, diagnostic disclosure of autism results in the AC being perceived as more intelligent and useful, but participants also perceived themselves to be more helpful toward the AC than they actually were. We evaluate the strengths and limitations of the current method and provide recommendations for future research. The source code for Dyad3D is freely available (CC-BY-NC 4.0) so that the study is reproducible and open to future adaptation.
... While interactions between autistic people have been shown to exhibit complimentary features (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018a), interactions between autistic and nonautistic people have been shown to be subject to a number of biases (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018b;, with the label of autism playing a central role in sense-making processes. The findings here highlight how non-autistic people may over-estimate their own helpfulness towards autistic people, which in turn, would mean they are less likely to see validity in the claims made by autistic people that they are not helpful; or, due to the paradoxical effects of helping (or even perceiving that one is being helpful: Gillespie & Hald, 2017), this bias may even lead to expectations that autistic people should be grateful. ...
... Such a finding aligns with evidence from other interpersonal contexts involving people with and without disabilities. For example, in relationships between caregivers and people with aphasia, caregivers have been shown to demonstrate a variety of helping behaviours which, paradoxically, reinforce the assumption of disability and potentially restrict the agency of people with aphasia to direct conversational action (Gillespie & Hald, 2017). ...
Research on autism, which is defined as a life-long developmental disability affecting social interaction, has focussed predominantly on how autistic individuals perceive and interact with others with less emphasis on the perspectives of their interactional partners. Yet autistic viewpoints have highlighted how other people are part of a two-way breakdown in interaction originating from differences between people rather than the deficit of any one individual, a phenomenon known as the double empathy problem. A gap therefore exists in the literature in terms of understanding how autistic sociality (i.e. the range of social opportunities possible for a given individual on the spectrum) is shaped by different interactional partners. This thesis examines the double empathy problem in three interactional contexts. Study 1 examines relationships between autistic people and their family members through focussing on perspective-taking, the ability to impute mental states to others. In light of prior research where autistic abilities have been assessed using abstract scenarios, Study 1 implements a two-way measure of perspective-taking which considers both sides of 22 real-life relationships (n=44) consisting of autistic adults and their family members, to understand how autistic people are seen by familiar others as well as vice versa. It uses a mixed-methods approach, where members of each dyad were individually asked about 12 topics, providing quantitative scores and qualitative explanation of their rating of Self, their rating of their partner, and their predicted rating by their partner. Comparison of perspectives provided a means for detecting misunderstandings and their underlying rationale. The contribution of Study 1 is that it shows perspective-taking is two-sided: family members can be biased in underestimating the perspective-taking of their autistic relatives, while autistic adults are aware of being negatively viewed despite disagreeing with such views. Study 2 examines interactions between autistic adults (n=30) partaking in a naturally occurring activity of video-gaming at a charity. It is a qualitative study using participant observation, with each conversational turn systematically rated in terms of coherence, affect and symmetry to identify the key features of neurodivergent intersubjectivity, the process through which autistic people build shared understanding in their own non-normative ways. The contribution of Study 2 is to identify two forms of neurodivergent intersubjectivity which enable shared understanding to be achieved, but which have traditionally been viewed as undesirable from a normative social viewpoint: a generous assumption of common ground that, when understood, lead to rapid rapport, and, when not understood, resulted in potentially disruptive utterances; and a low demand for coordination that ameliorated many challenges associated with disruptive turns. Study 3 examines interactions involving lay people (n=256) who believe they are interacting with an autistic partner through an online collaborative game, when in fact they are playing with an intelligent virtual agent (IVA) who behaves the same way for all participants. Its contribution is methodological as it develops a new application for simulating interactions in experimental research called Dyad3D. Study 3 uses Dyad3D to explore how disclosure of an autism diagnosis by the IVA affects social perception and social behaviour in comparison to a disclosure of dyslexia and a condition where there is no diagnostic disclosure. Combined with a post-game questionnaire, Study 3 triangulates self-reported (quantitative rating scales and qualitative explanation) and behavioural measures (quantitative scores of actions within the game) to understand the interplay of positive and negative discrimination elicited through using the label of autism. It highlights that diagnostic disclosure of autism leads to significant positive bias in social perception when compared to a disclosure of dyslexia or a no disclosure condition; yet participants are not as helpful towards the autistic IVA as they think they are, indicating a potential bias in helping behaviour. The thesis takes an abductive methodological approach which integrates with a wider call for a more participatory model of research in the study of autism. Abduction is a form of reasoning which involves the iterative development of a hypothesis that holds the best explanatory scope for the underlying phenomena observed. It is inherently aligned with a participatory model of research because abduction involves the ongoing exploration of ideas that may originate from multiple sources (i.e. interactions with autistic people as well as research outputs). Taking a more holistic approach to the development of knowledge with autistic people which recognises the legitimacy of different claims to knowledge is important, because prior research in the field has often failed to critically reflect on researcherparticipant positionality and the principals underlying the development of research agenda. For this reason, the thesis details the participatory activities which surround and interconnect with the development of the three empirical studies. Overall the thesis contributes to understanding autistic sociality as a dynamic, interactionally shaped process. It reasons that autistic people have unrealised social potential, both in terms of imagining other perspectives (Study 1) and coordinating with others (Study 2). However, such social potential may not be easily recognised by other non-autistic people who may be biased in their assumptions about autism (Study 1 and Study 3). Consequently, the evidence presented in this thesis helps to explain some of the processes that underscore the double empathy problems reported in literature, including poor mental health (because autistic people are aware that they are misunderstood by others, see Study 1), employment prospects (because autistic social potential is under-recognised by others, see Study 1 and 3), and quality of life (because neurotypical standards of communication are not compatible with neurodivergent forms of intersubjectivity, see Study 2). The thesis therefore makes suggestions for how we design enabling environments which are sensitive to the dynamic factors that can enable autistic sociality to flourish.
