Conversational Repair Research Articles

“We’re running out of fuel!”: When does miscommunication go unrepaired?

AbstractWe introduce a framework for studying repair initiation in the face of miscommunication. Our aim is to seed development of models that both predict when conversational repair is a likely communicative strategy and explain why interlocutors would not engage in repair in the face of conversational difficulty. We identify three factors as critical to the predictability of repair: (i) the extent to which a misalignment is (un)recognized by participants (ignorance); (ii) the significance of misalignment relative to some cluster of goals (cost of misalignment); and (iii) the significance of engaging in repair relative to some cluster of goals (cost of repair). We offer a simple method for graphically depicting relevant aspects of communicative situations and exemplify the framework with examples of non-repaired miscommunication before discussing its applicability to different empirical domains.

Repair organisations in English as second language classrooms in a Ghanaian Technical University

Communication breakdowns usually occur in teaching and learning interactions, necessitating repair. This study investigated the types of conversation repair organisations utilised by both lecturers and students during classroom interaction at the Takoradi Technical University. The study adopted the Conversation Analysis (CA) theory as a framework and methodology. The repair organisations identified in the study included self-initiated self-repair, self-initiated other-repair and other-initiated self-repair. Also, during classroom interaction, lecturers and students use paralinguistic elements such silence, cupping of the ear and smiling to convey their feelings and thoughts. Some implications of the study are that university lecturers should repair in their classroom interactions to make them more aware of communication breakdowns and what to do when there are issues with comprehensibility and intelligibility. Additionally, they have to design courses that will educate students on the application of various types of repair organisations and paralinguistic features in classroom discourse to engender effective communication.

Threading lasso fixation versus full-thickness conversion in repairing articular-sided partial-thickness supraspinatus tendon tears

To compare the effect of two different arthroscopic procedures, threading lasso fixation and full-thickness conversion, for repairing articular-sided partial-thickness supraspinatus tendon tear. From July 2015 to November 2018, 21 patients with articular-sided partial-thickness supraspinatus tendon tears underwent arthroscopic modified threading lasso fixation repair(group A). There were 12 males and 9 females in the group, with an average age of(53.2±6.4)years old. Twenty-four patients with articular-sided partial-thickness supraspinatus tendon tears received arthroscopic full-thickness conversion repair(group B). In this group, there were 14 males and 10 females, with an average age of (55.7±5.2) years old. The American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) score and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) shoulder score were used to evaluate preoperative and postoperative clinical function. MRI was used to examine the healing status of the reconstructed rotator cuff. All patients were followed up, and the duration ranged from 20 to 27 months, with a mean of (23.7±3.1) months. In threading lasso fixation group, ASES score and UCLA score increased from 50.6±6.4 and 15.6±2.7 preoperatively to 87.3±5.2 and 31.6±2.4 postoperatively. In full-thickness conversion group, ASES score and UCLA score increased from 52.3±5.6 and 16.8±2.4 scores to 90.1±4.8 and 32.1±2.8. There were also no significant differences in ASES score and Constant score between the two groups before and after operation. There were no significant differences in rotator cuff healing between the two groups(χ2=2.374, P=0.128). For the treatment of articular-sided partial-thickness supraspinatus tendon tears both arthroscopic repairs employing threading lasso fixation and full-thickness conversion could achieve satisfactory clinical results, and there are no significant differences in clinical outcomes between the two techniques. Arthroscopic repair with threading lasso fixation is a novel transtendinous procedure in which integrity of the tendon can be preserved.

Conversational repair in individuals with Alzheimer disease.

many of the difficulties that usually arise in colloquial conversation may be repaired as the interaction develops. Conversational repair is a linguistic strategy that indicates evidence of the partners' abilities to promote necessary mutual understanding for effective communication. This study aims to analyze the oral text repairs of 10 older adults with Alzheimer's dementia (AD) and 10 older adults without dementia, as well as to verify whether they are a useful element for language disorders identification in AD. autobiographical interview and application of items of the MetAphAs protocol were proposed. Data were analyzed based on the methodology of conversational analysis. the results indicated that self-initiated repairs are frequent in both groups, although subjects with AD made more use of inadequate repairs, which did not favor mutual understanding. Hetero-repairs occurred most frequently in conversations with individuals with AD, suggesting the need for interlocutor's intervention to adjust a specific utterance. this research has shown that using repair strategies is sensitive to individuals with AD cognitive performance.

Clarification and repair in emergency remote EFL classes

During the sudden shift in education onto digital platforms due to the Covid-19 emergency, teachers became streamers and experimented with new tools to involve their students in video-mediated, multi-floor, multiparticipant, and multimodal interactions. In turn, students experienced new ways to participate in lessons and interact with instructors. This study focuses on clarification and repair in videoconferencing as a strategy to address trouble in video-mediated communication and to re-establish mutual understanding. Through participant observation of online classes, the researcher collected data on classroom interactions, which are analyzed through conversation analysis. The findings show how the digital affordances of video-mediated conversation help teachers and students manage intersubjectivity and compensate for the lack of non-verbal cues typical in face-to-face interaction, such as facial expressions or tone of voice. Consequently, this article argues that the wisdom gained during the pandemic can help teachers and lecturers better deal with clarification and repair in digital conversations. Ultimately, it can increase their digital interactional competence, thus giving way to more interaction and learning in EFL classes, both online and in-person.

Gestural repair in Mandarin conversation

Ever since Charles Goodwin’s seminal works on gaze, there has been a long-standing interest in Conversation Analysis in the interrelationship between talk and bodily conduct in the accomplishment of social action. Recently, a small but emerging body of research has explored the ways in which embodied conduct figures in the organization and operations of repair. In this article, I take up a similar theme and investigate the interaction between talk and iconic gestures in same-turn self-initiated repair in Mandarin conversation. The phenomenon I examine concerns the use of what I call “gestural repair.” The analysis focuses on how such repair can intertwine with talk in multi-stage operations in the progressivity and resolution of repair. The data are drawn from 50 hours of naturally-occurring conversations collected in China. Some unique features of such gestural repair observed in the Mandarin data are also discussed.

Prompting for repair as a language teaching strategy for augmentative and alternative communication

Conversational repair has been found to play a fundamental role in the acquisition of language. This paper describes existing research on conversational repair and its relationship to language learning, whether a first language or a second language, as well as its relevance to augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). A case is made for incorporating prompts to repair in conversation-based language interventions with children learning to use AAC. We argue that interventions targeting linguistic complexity should encourage self-repair in conversation in order to develop linguistic and operational competency as well as increase automaticity when using AAC. Clinical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Conversational Structure Analysis in Conflict Zone Interview

The researcher analyzed the conversational structure in the conflict zone interview. The aspects that the researcher examined were opening, closing, adjacency pairs, turn-taking allocation, and repair strategies by using theories of Schegloff and Sack, the data of this descriptive qualitative study were classified into three rules (R1, R2 and R3) of turn-taking allocation namely R1(current-select-next), R2(next speaker self-selects), and R3(no-current-speakerselect- next & no-next-speaker-self-selects) and four strategies of conversational repair: SISR(self-initiated self-repair),OISR (other-initiated self-repair), SIOR(self-initiated other repair), and OIOR(other-initiated other-repair The researcher collected the data by downloading and transcribing the video. The research found that the opening of this conversation used the greeting-thank sequences. In the closing section,the interviewer ensured there was no information left and then closed by saying thanks and pleasure. Regarding turn taking allocation based on Sacks. R1 appeared 231 times, R2 appeared 22 times and R3 didn’t appear. In the conflict zone interview, there were 4 combinations of adjacency pairs. There were combinations of questions –answers with 54 pairs, information-response with 8 pairs, statement-confirmation with 55 pairs, and greeting-thank with only 1 pair. Then, there are 4 types of conversational repair found in the conversation. The type of repair that dominates in the conversation was Self-Initiated Self-Repair(SISR) which appeared 45 times. Self-Initiated Other-Repair (SIOR) appeared 3 times, and Other-Initiated Self-Repair (OISR) appeared with 11 times.And then,the last one is Other-Initiated Other-Repair (OIOR) was not found at all.

My Bad! Repairing Intelligent Voice Assistant Errors Improves Interaction

One key technique people use in conversation and collaboration is conversational repair. Self-repair is the recognition and attempted correction of one's own mistakes. We investigate how the self-repair of errors by intelligent voice assistants affects user interaction. In a controlled human-participant study (N =101), participants asked Amazon Alexa to perform four tasks, and we manipulated whether Alexa would "make a mistake'' understanding the participant (for example, playing heavy metal in response to a request for relaxing music) and whether Alexa would perform a correction (for example, stating, "You don't seem pleased. Did I get that wrong?'') We measured the impact of self-repair on the participant's perception of the interaction in four conditions: correction (mistakes made and repair performed), undercorrection (mistakes made, no repair performed), overcorrection (no mistakes made, but repair performed), and control (no mistakes made, and no repair performed). Subsequently, we conducted free-response interviews with each participant about their interactions. This study finds that self-repair greatly improves people's assessment of an intelligent voice assistant if a mistake has been made, but can degrade assessment if no correction is needed. However, we find that the positive impact of self-repair in the wake of an error outweighs the negative impact of overcorrection. In addition, participants who recently experienced an error saw increased value in self-repair as a feature, regardless of whether they experienced a repair themselves.

Cognitive and social delays in the initiation of conversational repair

The exact timing of a conversational turn conveys important information to a listener. Most turns are initiated within 250ms after the previous turn. However, interlocutors take longer to initiate certain types of turns: those that either require more cognitive processing or are socially dispreferred. Many dispreferred turns are also cognitively demanding, so it is difficult to attribute specific conversational delays to social or cognitive mechanisms. In this paper, we evaluate the relative contribution of cognitive and social variables to the timing of utterances in conversation.
 We focus on a type of turn that is socially dispreferred, cognitively demanding, and generally delayed: other-initiations of repair (OIRs). OIRs occur when a listener notices and decides to signal a comprehension problem (e.g., "What?"). We analyzed the Floor Transfer Offsets of 456 OIRs, and found that interlocutors initiated OIRs later when trouble sources had weaker discourse context or were shorter, and when the OIR was more face-threatening. Our results suggest that both cognitive and social variables contribute to the timing of delayed utterances in conversation. We discuss how attention, prediction, planning, and social preference manifest in the timing of turns.

An Adjunct to Repair: You Know in Speech Production and Understanding Difficulties

ABSTRACT The English-language particle you know is frequently associated with speech production and understanding difficulties. The present study combines sequential and distributional analyses to explicate the particle’s relationship to the conversational repair system. It demonstrates that you know functions as an adjunct to repair, addressing secondary difficulties associated with implementing self-repair in practice, while also promoting the avoidance of transformative repair operations. This repair adjunct viewpoint trades off the particle’s general import as an alignment token and is supported by examining its specialized role in: (a) self-repair operations, (b) suboptimal formulations, and (c) understanding pursuits. This article elaborates our understanding of the repair system by identifying an ancillary practice that smooths over recurrent shortcomings of natural speech. Data in American English.

Fluency and communication strategy use in group interactions for occupational purposes

Communication strategy use varies with proficiency in the target language and less proficient learners rely on L1 strategies for conversational repair. In an English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) context where the technical register is unfamiliar, little is known on whether communication strategies can enable learners with limited English proficiency to overcome hesitancy in speech. The study examined learners’ use of communication strategies and fluency in group interactions in an EOP context using an integrated problem-solving, interactional and discourse-based framework of communication strategies. A 13-week communication strategy training was conducted focusing on conversational repair strategies (fillers, approximation, code-switching), meaning negotiation strategies (clarification request, comprehension check, confirmation check), response strategies (rephrase, shadowing, reply) and discourse-based strategies (lexical repetition, topic fronting). The results on communication strategy use in three group interaction sessions involving three participants showed that the most frequently used communication strategies were lexical repetition and fillers. The participants’ fluency, as measured in C-units and frequency of fillers, was higher when they interacted on familiar topics. The participants learnt to use discourse-based strategies but not meaning negotiation strategies. The findings suggest that for better negotiation of meaning, the communication strategy training needs to create metacognitive awareness of the interlocutors’ communicative needs.

Therapeutic songwriting as a meaningful, relationship-oriented activity to establish authentic communicative opportunities during therapy for an individual with PPA

ABSTRACT Background Therapeutic songwriting (TSW) is an activity used with people who have neurological and psychological conditions. TSW can act as a tool for assisting people with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) struggling to regain coherence and meaning amidst the psychosocial sequelae that often accompanies this chronic, progressive medical condition. With help from a facilitating clinician, TSW addresses issues of building and maintaining interpersonal relationships in the face of considerable language challenges. Aim This study explored how two different forms of TSW were perceived by a participant with PPA in terms of the quality and meaningfulness of the activity, and as a modality for conducting communication therapy. Methods & Procedures The participant was a 64-year-old woman with the logopenic variant of PPA. She participated in 13 therapy sessions designed to increase her successful use of conversational repair strategies while engaged in TSW using two different techniques: Song Parody Technique (SPT) and modified song Collage Technique (SCT). The participant’s perceptions were measured using the Meaningfulness of Songwriting Scale and a Songwriting Satisfaction and Enjoyment scale. A modified version of the ASHA Quality of Communication Life (ASHA QCL) was administered (pre and post) to measure the extent the participant believed TSW impacted her quality of communication life. The use of spontaneous repair strategies (word finding and picture board) during TSW tasks was tallied from recorded sessions. Outcomes & Results The participant found both forms of TSW meaningful. She enjoyed the activity and indicated creating the two songs was satisfying. She preferred the SPT over the modified SCT. When compared to pre-ASHA QCL measures, the participant felt it “easier to communicate” and to “stay in touch with family/friends”. She rated herself higher in terms of feeling “included”, “seeing the funny things in life”, “trying when people didn’t understand her”, and was more “confident in her ability to communicate”. The use of conversation repair increased from 20% to 80% of the opportunities during TSW. Conclusions Given the risk for psychosocial sequelae that often accompanies PPA, TSW was identified as an authentic, meaningful activity that created connectedness, while working on communication repairs during therapy. Even in the face of declining linguistic and cognitive abilities, TSW provided an opportunity for enriched social interaction, self-expression, motivation, confidence, and enhanced quality of communication. TSW addressed the importance of maintaining relationships in a manner that supported individualized choice and dignity for the participant.

Other-initiations of repair in Norwegian Sign Language

During the last five decades, a substantial amount of research has been conducted into conversational repair (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977), and especially other-initiation of repair (OIR). A vast part of the research has been on spoken English, without considering or having access to embodied practices. Through a series of examples, this explorative paper provides a brief overview of formats and subtypes of other-initiation of self-repair employed in Norwegian Sign Language (NTS). Special attention is given to the implicit open-class repair-initiation “freeze-look”, as identified by Manrique (2016), Manrique and Enfield (2015), and Manrique, Enfield, Levinson, Crasborn, and Floyd (2017) in Argentine Sign Language, and to the subtype of restricted repair-initiations categorized as candidate offers. The data has been extracted from a corpus of informal multi-person conversations among deaf adult co-workers, recorded at their workplaces.
 The results show a high degree of overlap with formats found in spoken languages, but also highlight features that seem to be unique to signed languages and the visual mode of communication. The examples presented take the form of summaries, transcriptions, uncensored video clips, and series of stills. 
 

Correction and repair: a comparative analysis of a boy with ASD interacting with a parent and with an ABA trainer

ABSTRACT Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is a widely used therapeutic intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) yet there has been little research into the interactional organization of ABA sessions. We report a comparative case study of two interactions in which the same child, a 12-year-old boy with ASD, interacts with his father and interacts with an Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) trainer. Both interactions occur at home and are drawn from a small corpus (2 h) of children with ASD in domestic settings. Drawing on CA to delineate the sequential relationships between the actions of the adult participant and the child, we present a quantitative and microstructural analysis of 156 directive sequences in order to examine the similarities and differences between the two interactions. We first show that the rate of the production of directives is higher in the ABA session. The analysis then demonstrates the applicability of Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks’ (1977) treatment of repair in conversation to some problems that occur in how the child responses to adults’ directives. However, we show that whilst some correction-initiations target problems with hearing, speaking, and understanding, some target substantive problems. We identify a practice, explicating an error, whereby correction-initiations are expanded to point out the nature of the error. This practice can show that the correction-target is being construed as a substantive error. In such cases, the correction-initiation is not a subtype of repair-initiation in the sense of Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks’ (1977) analysis of repair.

Pragmatic and Conversational Features of Arabic-Speaking Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Examining Performance and Caregivers' Perceptions.

Purpose This study investigates the features of pragmatic and conversational skills in the language of Arabic-speaking adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by comparing them with typically developing (TD) Arabic-speaking adolescents in Saudi Arabia. It aims to identify the differences in the pragmatic skills of the two groups and the perception of those skills by caregivers, with respect to four main pragmatic areas: discourse management, communicative function, conversational repair, and presupposition abilities. Method Data for this study were collected from 15 Saudi adolescents with ASD and a control group of 15 TD adolescents, matched for gender and language abilities. All the participants were in the normal IQ range. The caregivers of the adolescents with ASD and TD adolescents also participated in this study. Data were collected on the adolescents' performances using the Yale in vivo Pragmatic Protocol. In addition, the Pragmatics Profile of Everyday Communication Skills (PPECS) was used to collect data on the caregivers' perceptions of the adolescents' abilities. The combination of tools in this study allows for a unique comparison between actual performance and caregivers' perceptions. Results As expected, both the adolescents' performances and the caregivers' perceptions reflected an overall deficit in the pragmatic and conversational skills of adolescents with ASD. However, we also identified an inconsistency between the caregivers' estimation of the participant's pragmatic abilities and the actual abilities demonstrated by the adolescents. In particular, TD adolescents performed significantly better than adolescents with ASD in the pragmatic areas of turn-taking, topic maintenance, and topic initiation, but the caregivers did not detect differences between the two groups in these discourse management abilities. Conclusions This study has important implications for both ASD interventions and assessment. It provides a comprehensive assessment approach for measuring pragmatic skills, including both direct (participants' performances) and indirect (caregivers' perceptions) measures. Future research may benefit from adopting the combined approach used in this study to explore pragmatics in ASD. Differences between caregivers' perceptions and the performances of individuals with ASD should be considered, as well as the influence of various factors on their communication.

Conversational Repair and the Acquisition of Language

ABSTRACT In this article, I examine how repairs in adult-child conversations guide children’s acquisition of language. Children make unprompted self-repairs to their utterances. They also respond to prompts for repair, whether open (Hm?, What?) or restricted (You hid what?), and to restricted offers (Child: I falled, Adult: You fell?). Children respond to clarification requests with self-repairs in the next turn, and make use of the feedback offered. The contrast between their utterance and the adult utterance identifies the locus of the error (negative feedback), while the adult’s offer presents a conventional version of the child’s utterance (positive feedback). I describe the use of restricted offers in conversations with children acquiring English and French, then present two case studies of how these inform children about homophonous French verb forms and early opaque Hebrew verb uses. These findings demonstrate the fundamental role of repair in the acquisition of a first language.

Dysarthria and other-initiated repair in everyday conversation

ABSTRACT Dysarthria is commonly understood as a motor speech disorder characterized by symptoms that are framed as physiologically or acoustically measurable. The effects of dysarthria on social interaction through conversation have been reported but, in comparison with physical measures, remain relatively unexplored. Other-initiated repair sequences are particularly common in dysarthria-in-interaction, drawing attention to the actions of both participants in managing (un)intelligibility, rather than the behavior(s) of the person with dysarthric speech in isolation. These sequences merit detailed and ongoing investigation as they enable us to understand how dysarthria impacts on conversation and, critically, how participants attempt to manage difficulties when they arise. This study explores the organization of other-initiated repair sequences in a dyad where one participant has severe dysarthria arising from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) also known as MND. Two hours of recordings were collected on four dates over a 12-month period with the data presented here from recording two. The evidence shows that the participants were able to resolve their troubles, but it required extensive work to both identify the trouble sources and to unravel the problems to reach a satisfactory understanding. The interactions presented in this paper reveal an important limitation of other initiation of repair. Physical restrictions were seen to play an important part in the dysarthric speaker’s ability to position his talk in sequential context and successfully accomplish self-repair; particularly, third-turn repair. The present study has offered a depiction of layered conversational problems that other-initiation of repair may not completely resolve or, in some cases, multiply.

母子对话中母亲发起的会话修正现象研究

母子对话中母亲发起的会话修正现象研究

Lighiting Control of Lighting Accompanying ZEB Conversion Repair Work

Lighiting Control of Lighting Accompanying ZEB Conversion Repair Work