Savolainen, I., Klippi, A., Tykkyläinen, T., Higginbotham, J., & Launonen, K. (2020). The structure of participants’ turn-transition practices in aided conversations that use speech-output technologies. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 36(1), 18–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/07434618.2019.1698654
This study examined turn-transition structures used during aided turn initiations between four male students aged 7 to 18 years with complex communication needs and their mothers. Three students were diagnosed with cerebral palsy and reported to have a gap between their development and verbal age from 0 to 5 years, and one student was diagnosed with Aicardi goutieres syndrome with a gap in his development and verbal age of 12 years. A mutual orientation to progressivity was observed in the following three-part turn-transition comprising aided turn initiations: 1) the pre-beginning, when the aided communicator shifted his gaze to the device during a partner’s turn or a transition-relevant place; 2) the middle of aided turn construction, during which communication partners either continued a sequence, produced a first pair part, or remained silent, and; 3) the end, when the aided communicator activated the speech generating device following a gap, latch, or overlap. During the pre-beginning, mothers most frequently engaged in talking by continuing a previous sequence, suggesting that the aided communicator’s actions were viewed as anticipatory signs rather than overlapping turns. During the middle of turn-transitions, the mothers’ talking actions were treated by both partners as an allowable parallel activity that didn’t disrupt the progress because these contributions rarely required a reply and were most often completed before the activation of the aided communicator’s SGD. If aided communicators did respond to overlapping talk, it was most often with an unaided response to display agreement or confirmation through relatively short embodied or vocal resources. Thus, the third part of the turn-transition was most often preceded by a silent gap because the mothers stopped talking, suggesting that mothers worked to preserve an interactional slot.