Conversation partner responses to problematic talk produced by people with aphasia: Some alternatives to repair

A salient feature of conversations involving people with aphasia is the prevalence and persistence of threats to intersubjectivity (i.e. mutual understanding). Being unable to understand what is being said and its import can be a frustrating and distressing experience for people with aphasia and their conversation partners (cf. Laakso, 2003; Lock, Wilkinson, & Bryan, 2001; Wilkinson, 2007). One reason for the confronting nature of severe problems with intersubjectivity is that they arise infrequently during interactions involving people without communication disorders. That is, for the most part, people have few issues establishing what others are attempting to achieve through talking, be it greeting, arguing, inviting, complaining, or otherwise. When problems do emerge—when a speaker says “cup” when they intended to say “plate”; when an innocent question is heard as a complaint, and so on—social actors have various techniques for revising their conduct, and righting interactional business. Researchers using Conversation Analysis (CA) have described the practices that people employ to “repair” such difficulties with speaking, hearing, and understanding talk in conversation (e.g. Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). This work has provided a solid foundation for examining fractures to intersubjectivity during conversations involving people with aphasia (e.g. Aaltonen & Laakso, 2010; Ferguson, 1994; Laakso & Klippi, 1999; Oelschlaeger & Damico, 2003). Studies of conversation repair and aphasia have contributed new knowledge about aphasia’s impact on everyday life, and led to the development of assessment and intervention procedures focused on repair (e.g. Lock et al., 2001; Whitworth, Perkins, & Turner, 1997). In particular, studies of conversation repair and aphasia have highlighted the key role of conversation partners in collaboratively resolving problems with intersubjectivity. However, an important feature of repair as an interactional practice is that it is optional. That is, when a listener is confronted with problematic talk from a speaker, they are not compelled to engage in repair, and may choose to elide the trouble altogether, or address it in some other way. For instance, Jefferson (2007) found that listeners occasionally responded to obvious speaker errors with minimal, receipting responses (e.g. mm, yeah) in place of repair. If the conversation partners of people with aphasia resist repair in this fashion, it has the potential to severely curtail the participation of people with aphasia. That is, without the benefit of collaborative repair efforts, the conversational contributions of people with aphasia may be more effortful and less successful, thereby restricting their ability to implement social action efficiently, or at all (see, e.g., Perkins, 2003, and Laakso, 2003, for some preliminary observations)

Portfolio pointers: Preparing and presenting high quality teaching portfolios

This goal of this project was to develop a set of guidelines for creating teaching portfolios for the Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards or for other purposes. It includes key pointers to “getting started”, collecting evidence, interrogating practice, editing, and protecting the unique “voice” of the nominee and their student body. The guidelines consist of general principles and practical examples from both successful academic developers and award recipients and some examples from award-winning portfolios to illustrate good practice

Conversational Repair of Word-Finding Difficulty

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A collaborative approach to supporting communication in the assessment of decision making capacity

Legislation is beginning to reflect the need to formally assess people whom are suspected of reduced mental capacity. However, these legislative changes have preceded research into effective and efficient assessment protocols. In order to demonstrate decision making capacity, an individual needs to communicate their understanding and wishes. However, decision making capacity can be masked when communication is impaired, for example, through impaired receptive and expressive language or unintelligible speech. For this reason, people with aphasia and related neurogenic communication disorders can be significantly compromised in their ability to participate n decision making, yet have a human right to the support required to facilitate such decision-making and to exercise their legal capacity (United Nations, 2006). Speech-language pathologists are integral to maximising a person’s communication ability; however, commonly used speech pathology strategies are not well known by other disciplines (Ferguson et al, 2010). We present up-to-date guidelines and practical strategies to facilitate communication in people with aphasias and other language deficits. A collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach is achievable and consistent with an inclusive human rights approach to decision making

Propositional Idea Density in written descriptions of health: Potential clinical applications

In order to assess the effect of word finding difficulties for the spontaneous discourse of people with aphasia, a number of different measures of informativeness have been developed for clinical application (Doyle, Goda, & Spencer, 1995; Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993; Oelschlaeger & Thorne, 1999; Wright, Silverman, & Newhoff, 2003). The main challenges for the assessment of discourse (written or spoken) relate to issues of validity and reliability (AUTHOR DELETED). There is a need for valid and authentic sampling which is personally relevant to individuals and additionally, able to be repeated for the same individual on successive occasions, and comparable to other individuals. The use of a consistent elicitation task that could be widely used for adult populations would be beneficial to both allow comparisons of the same individual over time and also across individuals

"Just a little bit on the outside for the whole time": Social belonging confidence and the persistence of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence students

The growing field of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) presents a unique and unexplored case within persistence research, meaning it is unclear how past findings from engineering will apply to this developing field. We conduct an exploratory study to gain an initial understanding of persistence in this field and identify fruitful directions for future work. One factor that has been shown to predict persistence in engineering is belonging; we study belonging through the lens of confidence, and discuss how attention to social belonging confidence may help to increase diversity in the profession. In this research paper, we conduct a small set of interviews with students in ML/AI courses. Thematic analysis of these interviews revealed initial differences in how students see a career in ML/AI, which diverge based on interest and programming confidence. We identified how exposure and initiation, the interpretation of ML and AI field boundaries, and beliefs of the skills required to succeed might influence students' intentions to persist. We discuss differences in how students describe being motivated by social belonging and the importance of close mentorship. We motivate further persistence research in ML/AI with particular focus on social belonging and close mentorship, the role of intersectional identity, and introductory ML/AI courses.Comment: Published in the 2023 Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Educatio

Advancing a Model of Students' Intentional Persistence in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are powering the applications we use, the decisions we make, and the decisions made about us. We have seen numerous examples of non-equitable outcomes, from facial recognition algorithms to recidivism algorithms, when they are designed without diversity in mind. Thus, we must take action to promote diversity among those in this field. A critical step in this work is understanding why some students who choose to study ML/AI later leave the field. While the persistence of diverse populations has been studied in engineering, there is a lack of research investigating factors that influence persistence in ML/AI. In this work, we present the advancement of a model of intentional persistence in ML/AI by surveying students in ML/AI courses. We examine persistence across demographic groups, such as gender, international student status, student loan status, and visible minority status. We investigate independent variables that distinguish ML/AI from other STEM fields, such as the varying emphasis on non-technical skills, the ambiguous ethical implications of the work, and the highly competitive and lucrative nature of the field. Our findings suggest that short-term intentional persistence is associated with academic enrollment factors such as major and level of study. Long-term intentional persistence is correlated with measures of professional role confidence. Unique to our study, we show that wanting your work to have a positive social benefit is a negative predictor of long-term intentional persistence, and women generally care more about this. We provide recommendations to educators to meaningfully discuss ML/AI ethics in classes and encourage the development of interpersonal skills to help increase diversity in the field.Comment: Presented at the 2022 Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Educatio

Engaging educators and students in the national roll-out of a new assessment tool (COMPASS).

This paper presents key results of an evaluation of a project (funded by ALTC), that led the integration of a newly developed competency based assessment tool (COMPASS™) within all 13 speech pathology education programs nationally. As part of the roll-out process, workshops were provided to close to 1,000 speech pathology clinical educators and students were introduced to the new tool through their lectures and tutorials. In order to provide formative feedback in the early stages of the project (end 2006 – early 2007); a questionnaire (designed to elicit both quantitative and qualitative data) was used following the first 6 workshops (214 educators) and after the first lectures to students at 2 universities (145 students). Most educators (95-97%) and students (74-85%) reported understanding the main concepts that inform key components of COMPASSTM (behavioural descriptors, generic competencies, and use of the Visual Analogue Scale). Qualitative feedback indicated a need for further support in relation to understanding the need for direct observation and the use of the Visual Analogue Scale. Toward the completion of the project (end 2007 – early 2008), a similar questionnaire was distributed to clinical educators (33 respondents) and to students in 3 universities (76 respondents). Results continued to be positive for understanding of main concepts for educators (79-100%) and for students (75-92%). An important finding was the close similarity between educators and students in relation to their understandings about the tool, the areas in which they reported wanting more support/training, and the ways in which they would like to obtain further experience. The implications of these findings for the further embedding of the new assessment tool are discussed.Adelaid

FlowerNet: a gene expression correlation metwork for anther and pollen development

Floral formation, in particular anther and pollen development, is a complex biological process with critical importance for seed set and for targeted plant breeding. Many key transcription factors regulating this process have been identified; however, their direct role remains largely unknown. Using publicly available gene expression data from Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), focusing on those studies that analyze stamen-, pollen-, or flower-specific expression, we generated a network model of the global transcriptional interactions (FlowerNet). FlowerNet highlights clusters of genes that are transcriptionally coregulated and therefore likely to have interacting roles. Focusing on four clusters, and using a number of data sets not included in the generation of FlowerNet, we show that there is a close correlation in how the genes are expressed across a variety of conditions, including male-sterile mutants. This highlights the important role that FlowerNet can play in identifying new players in anther and pollen development. However, due to the use of general floral expression data in FlowerNet, it also has broad application in the characterization of genes associated with all aspects of floral development and reproduction. To aid the dissection of genes of interest, we have made FlowerNet available as a community resource (http://www.cpib.ac.uk/ anther). For this resource, we also have generated plots showing anther/flower expression from a variety of experiments: These are normalized together where possible to allow further dissection of the resource

Identification and characterisation of Arabidopsis ER accessory proteins

ER accessory proteins are a novel class of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) proteins that facilitate the exit of polytopic membrane proteins from the ER. They are important for the correct targeting of their cognate polytopic membrane proteins to the plasma membrane (PM) and their absence leads to abnormal accumulation of their target in the ER. Until recently, it was not clear if such proteins exist in plants. However, work by Dharmasiri et al (2006) and Gonzales et al (2005) suggest that such proteins exists in plants too. Polytopic membrane proteins such as nutrient transporters, hormone transporters and sugar transporters are a very important class of proteins as they regulate many important physiological and biochemical processes. Better understanding of the targeting of these proteins to the PM is of considerable agronomic interest due to the importance of efficient use of resources in sustainable agriculture. One of the projects aims is to identify novel ER accessory proteins in Arabidopsis. Using a bioinformatics approach, 40 novel ER resident proteins were identified from a protein localisation database (LOPIT) generated by Dunkley et al (2006) as potential candidates for ER accessory proteins. Genetic, phenotypic and molecular approaches have been used to assess their role as potential ER accessory proteins. A few promising candidates have been identified, one of which AtBPL1 and related family. The AtBPL1 family has similarity to mammalian BAP31 which has been shown to function as an ER accessory protein (Ladasky et al, 2006). To determine if AtBPL1 family plays a similar role in plants a detailed molecular characterisation was carried out, this involved detailed expression analysis using reporter genes and in situ immunolocalisation and characterisation of miRNA lines. Smart screens suggest that BPL1 family members may be involved in the targeting of a nitrate transporter, however its precise target is currently unknown. A key focus of this present investigation have been on further characterisation of AXR4, which is required for the correct targeting of AUX1 to the plasma membrane (Dharmasiri et al, 2006). AUX1 belongs to a multi-gene family, involving three other members, LAX1, LAX2 and LAX3. Using genetic and cell biology approaches, AXR4 has been shown to be necessary for the correct localisation of at least two other members of this family LAX2 and LAX3. AXR4 mutants show defects in targeting of LAX2 and LAX3 to the plasmamembrane and show weak lax2 and lax3 phenotypes. Co-Immunoprecipitation studies revealed that AXR4 and AUX1 interact directly when co-expressed in insect cells. Finally molecular, bioinformatics and protein modelling approachs were used to probe the function of alpha beta hydrolase domain in AXR4 function. AXR4 appears to be tolerant to amino acid subsitition even at highly conserved amino acids, suggesting that the alpha beta hydrolase domain may not be important for its function