Method

129 

130 

three female, tried both a VOCA for writing (a Lightwriter™ or a SpeakOut^®) and a dynamic VOCA with touch screen and the prototype software with the vocabulary Phrases 2. The other participants only tried the VOCA with the prototype software and Phrases 2. The author, who was around and watched most of the role-play conversations from the corridor, also acted as a shop assistant in a few situations.

Table 7.1. Participants in the role‐play and the VOCAs they used  Participants ‐> 

VOCAs 

M1  M2  F1  F2  F3  F4  F5  F6  F7  F8  F9   

Keyboard  2  2  1  2  2  0  0  0  0  0  0   

Phrases 2  1  2  3  1  2  1  1  1  1  1  1   

In addition, recordings from a different role-play session where the same version of the vocabulary Phrases 2 was used were also included. The set-up was similar to the one reported here, but for the main part targeted experienced VOCA users with severe activity limitations regarding both mobility and speech (11.4.1). As a part of that session, three speaking participants also used Phrases 2 (F7, F8 and F9). The participants were all female, between the ages of 25 and 52. The results from these participants were included in a part of this study in order to get as much variation as possible in the group of participants who have tried Phrases 2. Every new user had the potential of adding a new perspective, select an expression the others had not, or use a function the others had missed. They were all speaking, reading and writing adults and met the same criteria as the primary group of 5-8 and they participated in the same kind of role-play session.

The fact that many of the participants worked with assistive technology, meant that most of them were well acquainted with the devices they were going to try and that they had met several individuals through their work who had to rely on AAC to communicate.

This may have helped them to perform more realistically in the role-play sessions, but it did not mean that they were used to using the devices themselves, as they had to do in the study. Although experts in many things surrounding the use of VOCAs, as users of such devices themselves they were novices.

7.2.2 Physical environment and instruments 

A role-play shop was set up in a corner of an office and a self-service store was arranged in an adjacent conference room. All customers had to “pay” for their purchases in the office shop, where they could also buy items that were located behind the counter, such as candy and colourful lockets. In the self-service store (the conference room), various goods were displayed on tables and hanging on the walls: t-shirts, caps, cushions, paper napkins, cups, a hair brush and various trinkets. Some had price tags on them, others not.

A manual wheelchair could be used by a participant acting as a customer.

131 

Three Panasonic^® DV camcorders were used to record the activity. One was placed in the office shop and two in the self-service store in the conference room.

7.2.3 VOCAs used in the role‐play 

The participants could choose what VOCA they wanted to use during the role-play. Four VOCAs were available, which meant that more than one conversation involving a VOCA could be going on simultaneously, and that a participant could get to know a VOCA while other participants were role-playing.

The following VOCAs were used:

• Lightwriter^® SL-35 with QWERTY keyboard, double displays and the Swedish synthetic voice Ingmar.

• SpeakOut™ with QWERTY keyboard, double LCD displays and the Swedish synthetic voice Ingmar.

• Fujitsu Siemens LifeBook^®xxxii P1510 with 8.9″ touch screen and the vocabulary Phrases 2, created in Toolbook Instructor 6.5 and the synthetic voice Erik.

• Compact Rolltalk^®xxxiii Tablet PC with 12″ touch screen and the vocabulary Phrases 2, created in Toolbook Instructor 6.5 and the synthetic voice Emma.

Most of the participants were acquainted with the functions of the VOCAs and had learned about the features of the vocabulary Phrases 2 on a previous occasion, several months prior to the role-play sessions. None of them were used to using a VOCA in conversations or had previous experience with role-play of the kind performed here.

7.2.4 Instructions 

The participants were instructed to act as a person who could not use their voice to speak and instead use a VOCA during the role-play. They could choose to shop alone or with a speaking friend. The participants were to decide among themselves what their roles should be, so the companion could take the role of personal assistant. They were encouraged to use the VOCAs to talk about the goods in the shop and to make as many purchases as possible, in order to get as much VOCA talk as possible for the recordings.

The participants could keep two of the things they bought during the role-play, as a reward for participating and as a means to make the activity more “real”.

The role-play shopping activities were video recorded and transcribed, as were some of the spontaneous reactions from the participants about their experiences.

7.2.5 Data analysis 

The recordings from the role-play sessions and the participants’ comments were

transferred from the DV tapes to a computer, converted to mpeg files and transcribed in

132 

the software Transana 2.21. The customers’ contributions were located in the

transcriptions and coded with respect to communicative functions, primarily speech acts.

Five of the participants had together taken part in nine shop conversations where they used a keyboard-based VOCA and nine shop conversations where they used a VOCA with dynamic screen and Phrases 2 (see table 7.1). The nine conversations where the keyboard-based VOCAs had been used were compared to the nine conversations where the same group of participants had used VOCA with dynamic screens and Phrases 2, regarding the number of utterances, the distribution of speech acts and Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). A further comparison was made regarding the distribution of speech acts with a VOCA with Phrases 2. The use by the group of five in the previous analysis was compared with a group of six participants who had not also used a keyboard VOCA.

Three of the new participants had participated in the present study (F4, F5 and F6), while the other three (F7, F8 and F9) had tried Phrases 2 in another role-play session, reported in chapter 10.