Samtalsinteraktion vid Huntingtons sjukdom – En jämförelse mellan närståendes uppfattning och samtalsanalys

Abstract

The purpose was to investigate how conversational interaction is pragmatically affected in Huntington’s disease; whether this can be assessed by means of a questionnaire completed by a close partner and how the close partners consider communicative ability has changed since the onset of illness. Three dyads, consisting of a person with Huntington’s disease and a conversational partner were involved. Conversations were analyzed with respect to the parameters in the questionnaire and through Activity Based Communication Analysis. The results showed word finding difficulties, impaired turn taking, feedback and body language, repair, articulation and prosody. Agreement between communication analysis and the close partner report varied between 54-65 %. The close partners considered communicative initiative, articulation, turn taking and sentence intonation as much changed. The results indicate that communicative interaction is pragmatically affected; that this can be illustrated by close partner reports and that the close partners report a deterioration of communicative ability.