Gruppaktiviteter för personer med afasi : En jämförelse mellan samtal där traditionella aktiviteter genomförs och där CIRCA används

Sammanfattning: Typical symptoms of aphasia such as comprehension problems and expressive language difficulties may affect the ability to take part in social contexts. Therefore, it is important to find ways to facilitate communication for people with aphasia. CIRCA is a communicationpromoting web service, designed for people with dementia and healthcare providers. Since people with aphasia show similar linguistic and communicative difficulties as people with dementia, it is possible that CIRCA would work as a communication support for people with aphasia as well. The aim of the present study was to investigate CIRCA as group activity for people with aphasia, in comparison to traditional group activities. Five participants with aphasia were recruited. The data collection involved four sessions with the use of CIRCA and four sessions where traditional activities were conducted, each session lasting for about 30 minutes. The sessions were videotaped, transcribed and analyzed according to methods inspired by Conversation Analysis, CA. The authors of this study chose to analyze the use of gestures, laughter, communication supporting behaviour and utilization of the available material in the various activities. The selected sections consisted of commonly used conversational phenomena that were considered to shape and characterize the conversations during traditional group activities, and when using CIRCA. Interviews about the participants' experiences of the conversations were conducted during the various activities. The selected conversational phenomena occurred frequently during all sessions as a type of interactive resources. What primarily characterized CIRCA as a group activity, in comparison to the traditional group activities, was that both pointing and iconic gestures were used to convey or clarify a message; that laughter served as a way of expressing mutual understanding about the material in CIRCA; that guesses in conversations when using CIRCA more often succeeded as communicative help behaviour; and that the images and music in CIRCA were used as a support for expression and understanding in conversation. All participants had a positive attitude toward the use of CIRCA.