The analysis of gestural and verbal pragmatic markers produced by Mild Cognitive Impaired participants during longitudinal and autobiographical interviews

CONTEXT

This corpus-based study presents a multimodal analysis of verbal pragmatic markers and non-verbal pragmatic markers in elderly people with Mild Cognitive Impairment aged over 75 years.

METHODS

The corpus collection and analysis methodology has been described in the Belgian CorpAGEst transversal study and the French VintAGE longitudinal and transversal oriented pilot studies. The protocols are available online in both English and French.

RESULTS & CONCLUSION

Our general findings indicate that with ageing, verbal pragmatic markers acquire an interactive function that allows people with MCI to maintain intersubjective relationships with their interlocutor. Furthermore, at the non-verbal level, gestural manifestations are increasingly used over time with a preference for non-verbal pragmatic markers with a referential function and an adaptive function. We aim to show the benefits of linguistic and interactional scientific investigation methods through cognitive impaired ageing for clinicians and family caregivers.

A tutorial on discourse analysis in healthy and pathological ageing

BACKGROUND

Age is a key factor when dealing with language and speech disorders, as it entails a progressive loss of neuroplasticity even in healthy individuals. Apart from this, ageing also affects our word-retrieval abilities, and thus, our discursive skills, particularly in people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, descriptions and/or measures of communicative performance always need to be interpreted through the lens of variation across the lifespan.

AIM

This paper's main objective is to create a general tutorial for researchers willing to start delving into discourse analysis, both in healthy and pathological ageing.

METHODS

An eight-step tutorial on discourse analysis in the elderly is presented. Each of these steps starts with general recommendations and progresses to more specific topics that may be relevant when conducting this type of research. All of the steps have been extrapolated from an extensive literature review on discourse analysis.

MAIN CONTRIBUTIONS

This work presents an easy-to-follow, step-by-step tutorial on discourse analysis in the elderly. It is aimed at clinical researchers who are taking their first steps in discourse analysis.It may also be useful for those who are already familiar with the methodology but may be interested in reading a general overview on the topic. Moreover, it offers new insights into the following topics: types of research questions, advantages and disadvantages of the different research methodologies and ethical considerations for data production in clinical linguistics.

CONCLUSIONS

Discourse analysis in the elderly is a highly complex issue that may require researching from different approaches and disciplines. This implies following a well-planned and thorough process, which we have detailed through the following eight steps: (i) reviewing literature; (ii) formulating the research question; (iii) designing the study; (iv) producing data; (v) selecting technological tools for data treatment; (vi) transcribing the corpus; (vii) annotating the corpus and (viii) analysing and interpreting the results.

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS

What is already known on the subject Approaches in discourse analysis in elderly adults, and particularly, in people suffering from dementia have already been analysed by previous researchers and categorised into three main trends: the quantitative-experimental approach, the qualitative-naturalistic approach and an in-between path, the quantitative-naturalistic approach. Also, several handbooks on general discourse analysis have presented comprehensive revisions on potential resources and methodologies that can be applied to researching discourse in elderly populations. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This paper takes these three main approaches and analyses how the most recent research on language in ageing and dementia fits into them. Furthermore, it reviews the advantages and disadvantages each of them may bring for beginners in the field of discourse analysis. Moreover, it adds some studies that may fit into a fourth approach: the qualitative-experimental. This article also presents information about several of the main steps when analysing data from the pragmatic perspective: the formulation of the research question, data production and the transcription/annotation process. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? This work has been devised for linguists who may want to read a systematization of the steps for analysing discourse in elderly populations. It may also be of interest to specialists from different fields such as speech therapy, psychology, gerontology or neurology who desire to start applying methods from discourse analysis in their work and aim to have a comprehensive scope of the main research trends within the field of clinical pragmatics.

Theory of mind in utterance interpretation: the case from clinical pragmatics

The cognitive basis of utterance interpretation is an area that continues to provoke intense theoretical debate among pragmatists. That utterance interpretation involves some type of mind-reading or theory of mind (ToM) is indisputable. However, theorists are divided on the exact nature of this ToM-based mechanism. In this paper, it is argued that the only type of ToM-based mechanism that can adequately represent the cognitive basis of utterance interpretation is one which reflects the rational, intentional, holistic character of interpretation. Such a ToM-based mechanism is supported on conceptual and empirical grounds. Empirical support for this view derives from the study of children and adults with pragmatic disorders. Specifically, three types of clinical case are considered. In the first case, evidence is advanced which indicates that individuals with pragmatic disorders exhibit deficits in reasoning and the use of inferences. These deficits compromise the ability of children and adults with pragmatic disorders to comply with the rational dimension of utterance interpretation. In the second case, evidence is presented which suggests that subjects with pragmatic disorders struggle with the intentional dimension of utterance interpretation. This dimension extends beyond the recognition of communicative intentions to include the attribution of a range of cognitive and affective mental states that play a role in utterance interpretation. In the third case, evidence is presented that children and adults with pragmatic disorders struggle with the holistic character of utterance interpretation. This serves to distort the contexts in which utterances are processed for their implicated meanings. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the role of theorizing in relation to utterance interpretation.