Acquired communication disorders

Research to support diagnosis and intervention

Speech, language and communication are supported by complex motor and cognitive systems. These systems can be impaired during adulthood, resulting in acquired communication disorders.

Impairment can be caused by:

brain damage eg stroke, traumatic brain injury
disease eg dementia, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s Disease.

About us

Speech pathologists diagnose and provide intervention for acquired communication disorders.

In order to support these activities, researchers in the Department of Linguistics conduct research on:

the nature of impairments to motor and cognitive systems
the effects of impairments on communication
speech pathology strategies for assessment and intervention.

Areas of interest

We are interested in the following areas of research:

aphasia, traumatic brain injury and right hemisphere communication disorder
assessment and intervention for multilingual people with aphasia
conversation therapy and conversation partner training
effective speech pathology assessment and intervention
measurement of dysarthria and its impact on everyday life
measurement of communication, particularly conversation.

Our projects

See some of the acquired communication disorders projects our researchers are working on.

Right hemisphere damage and everyday conversation

Damage to the right hemisphere of the brain can substantially impact cognition and communication. There is very little empirical evidence on how these (and other) cognitive impairments affect everyday conversation for people who have experienced right hemisphere damage (eg stroke, traumatic brain injury).

This project is exploring how right hemisphere damage changes conversation, with a view to improved speech pathology diagnosis and intervention for people with right hemisphere damage.

This project is funded by the Macquarie University Research Development Grant Scheme.

For more information, visit the Open Science Framework (OSF) site.

Aphasia, correction and micro-collaboration

Interactions involving people with aphasia involve extended periods of collaborative repair. A striking example of this is persistent cueing and correction in everyday conversation.

This project addresses the linguistic and multimodal practices that interactants implement in order to enter, sustain and exit engagement with this type of repair.

It also explores the relational implications of persistent attention to talk at this level of granularity, focusing on the moral properties of talk as a semiotic resource.

The findings of this project will offer novel information about how aphasia affects everyday life, and explore how a technical analysis of the internal dynamics of turns in conversation can be employed in aphasia rehabilitation.

Verbosity and traumatic brain injury

People who have suffered a traumatic brain injury experience diverse and variable problems for communication.

One symptom experienced by people with traumatic brain injury is verbosity, ie over-talkativeness. This project will examine verbosity as a disruption to the turn-taking system for conversation.

Specifying the nature of verbosity, and the behaviours associated with it, will be valuable for:

diagnosing the presence and severity of verbosity following traumatic brain injury
designing speech pathology assessment and intervention strategies targeting it.

Turn-taking in Bahasa Indonesia: typical and atypical interactions

Bahasa Indonesia is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world. It is derived from Malay, and is the official language of Indonesia.

There is sound evidence that aspects of turn-taking are universal across the world’s languages and cultures, but there is little empirical evidence relating to turn-taking in Bahasa Indonesia.

The findings of this study will generate new knowledge about Bahasa Indonesia, the relationship between language and turn-taking, and universal aspects of turn-taking in conversation.