When technological affordances meet interactional norms: the value of pre-screening in online chat counseling

We present a conversation analysis of openings sequences of online text-based chat counseling. Particular about this chat counseling is that the clients made available their help question through pre-screening. The data consisted of 40 chat sessions with pre-screening and 34 sessions without pre-screening from the Dutch alcohol and drugs chat service. In the chat sessions with pre-screening, the participants displayed accountability with regard to the norms relevant to pre-given information, which took up space and time and frequently involved interactional misalignment. In chat sessions without pre-screening of the question, the openings followed a more fluent interactional course. We discuss how affordances of digital communication media may work as constraints when the participants orient to interactional norms known from other, offline environments

Talking cognition: mapping and making the terrain

This book addresses issues of talk and cognition. For the first time some of the world‟s experts on interaction analysis have been brought together to consider the nature and role of cognition. They address the question of what part, if any, cognitive entities should play in the analysis of interaction. They develop different answers. Some are consistent with current thinking in cognitive psychology and cognitive science; others are more critical, questioning the idea that cognition is the obvious and necessary start point for the study of human action

Wat kopen we voor die kennis?

Waarde van wetenschap (What do we buy for that knowledge? The value of science). Newspaper interview for the science section of NRC Weeken

Dietary counseling on malnutrition::Clients show self-help in response to dietitians' history taking questions

Rationale: In this study, we aimed to explore how dietitians’ history-taking questions function during dietary counseling of clients with malnutrition (risk). Fruitful functioning of history-taking questions during the problem identification phase is crucial for dietitians to develop a client-centered dietary treatment plan. Methods: Using discursive psychology, we analyzed the problem identification phase of recorded dietitian-client conversations of 7 dietitians and 17 clients. Discursive psychology is a qualitative, inductive methodology that is used to analyze real-life conversations. Discursive psychology focuses on how descriptions in talk (including wording, intonation, pauses, non-verbal behavior) accomplish actions such as presenting oneself in a particular way. Results: Our analysis shows how, in response to dietitians’ history-taking questions, clients repeatedly demonstrate that they have already made some effort to self-help. Typically, these history-taking questions presume some biopsychosocial factor as the cause of the dietary problems discussed. In response, clients show they already started to eat extra, closely monitored their body weight, and tried to eat despite having no appetite. In addition, clients account for the absence of efforts by claiming various kinds of inability, such as facing difficulties in preparing food for oneself or by questioning whether their underlying medical condition caused the diet-related problem in the first place. Conclusion: This study shows that history-taking questions not only elicit answers with factual information but also evoke clients’ self-presentations. Responses from dietitians show little attention to the relevance of these self-presentations, while clients treat self-help as a normative requirement to demonstrate they have done everything they can before they sought professional help. To optimize the problem identification phase, we suggest that in addition to conversational techniques dietitians could increase their attention to clients’ actions performed