Spoken discourse is language beyond a single sentence used for a specific purpose, like telling a story or describing a scene

Discourse isn’t often clinically evaluated in aphasia
- Yet, we can get a lot of information from it! Such as: grammatical abilities, ability to tie together thoughts, and ability to access words across varying contexts.
- It may also be a better way of understanding all communication abilities, because it closely associates with gesturing and because even individuals with the most mild aphasia can sometimes experience difficulty with discourse
Our lab’s research tends to focus on monologue —> one person speaking! But, dialogue is also very important
Our research shows that the instructions and the task itself can change the discourse
- For example, language produced during a single picture description isn’t exactly like language produced during a story retelling
Thanks to funding from the National Aphasia Association, we are co-designing discourse stimuli and procedures in partnership with individuals with aphasia
We co-founded a working group, FOQUSAphasia (FOcusing on the QUality of Spoken discourse in Aphasia; www.foqusaphasia.com), to provide a free networking and learning space to discuss discourse in aphasia
- We have hosted many free lectures and workshops, all archived on our YouTube channel (@foqusaphasia7483).

Multimedia presentations on this topic

Funding

Thank you to the following for supporting this research!