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Write:Talk |
Developing Personal Identity through Story Telling
David A. O’Mara1,
Annalu Waller1, Lesley Tait2, Hilary Hood3,
Lynda Booth2,
Bernadette Brophy-Arnott3
1 Department of Applied Computing, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland
2 Dundee City Council Education Department
3 Dundee Speech and Language Therapy Service
Everyone is an individual whether they are disabled or not. Children develop an identity from the moment they are born. The interaction of child and environment together with the genetic inheritance of the child contribute to the development of personality. Children usually have a natural desire to become more independent as they grow. Many disabled children struggle to develop their personal identity because of factors such as over-protection and imposed limitations which can lead to learned helplessness.
Research at Dundee has focussed on the interactive communication needs of children with severe expressive communication impairments. Communicating successfully is an essential tool for independence. It also allows the individual to develop self-image and hence a personal identity.
Conversation does not exist for the sole purpose
of making our physical needs known, but enables individuals to interact
socially. Communication of social closeness and expression of personality is
not restricted to isolated sentences. Clarke and Clarke (1977) comment that:
“...hardly any of our day-to -day use of
language stops after one sentence. People engage in conversations, stories,
gossip and jokes that consist of a succession of sentences in a highly
organised social activity.”
Stories consist of anecdotes, jokes and experiences, and are used to promote social acceptance, social closeness and personality projection. Stories and anecdotes are particularly important as past experience and the ability to relate events is an essential part of a person's make-up. Conversational narrative provides a way of forming experience and relating past experience (Quasthoff and Nikolaus, 1982) and by making up fictional stories, children experiment with language, logical constructs and develop their imagination. In addition it provides form and meaning to life and is used to create one’s self-concept (Polkinghorne, 1991).
Children begin reminiscing at an early age and are known to relate short stories before they have acquired verbal communication. Children learn to communicate effectively through positive interaction with their friends and adults - good social interaction requires the ability to "entertain" the listener (Schank, 1990). Studies show that children’s story structures develop, initially with much prompting from a parent (Reilly, 1992).
Most augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems are designed to communicate needs and wants which are infrequently used. For example, the most common vocabulary available to AAC users enabling them to ask for a drink is rarely used because drinks are provided at set times (Murphy et al, 1994). However, few non-speaking children are given the time, vocabulary and opportunity to develop their individual outlook on life.
The need for non-speaking people to engage in story telling led to the development of a story-based communication system called Talk:About™ (Waller et al, 1996). A more recent research project has investigated whether, given the opportunity, children with severe communication disorders would use pre-stored stories for interactive conversation (Waller et al, 1999; Waller et al, 2000).
Five young people participated in the year-long study. The disabilities experienced by the subjects were different, but the common factor was a problem with expressive communication The participants had existing or emerging literacy skills and could access a conventional computer keyboard and trackpad.
Each participant was provided with a portable computer with a story-based conversation system and each system was customised for individual participants. The story-based AAC system used in this study was Talk:About™ (Don Johnston Incorporated. Wauconda, Illinois) which allows written work created within a word processor to be used in conversations, providing users with an integrated communication system. The users own pre-stored written material can be used in interactive conversation. Stories within the Talk:Aboutä system are stored with appropriate “topics” and “people” tags. These tags are used to retrieve specific stories. The Talk:Aboutä system also offers a list of possible stories according to the frequency and how recently they have been retrieved in the past. Quick:Chatä is contained within Talk:Aboutä and is used to access commonly used phrases. The standard button labels and phrases can be modified to suit individual needs. Figure 1 shows a participant’s Talk:Aboutä screen, with the “Jokes” story file open.
Figure 1: A Talk:Aboutä screen, with the “Jokes” story file open. The “Chat” panel is on the left of the story panel. The story panel consists of the “Who” and “What” buttons, the navigation buttons and a list of suggested stories.
The researchers worked with participants on a one-to-one basis, both at home and school, and within the classroom situation. The participants’ communication and language skills were monitored during the study using objective assessments and subjective feedback from parents and staff. The parents and staff were asked to complete questionnaires pre and post intervention.
Analysis of the questionnaires identified that the ability to express personality had developed in all five participants. Teachers, therapists and parents agree that all participants have developed their interactional skills because of the emphasis on story telling. Feedback has included statements such as: “I didn’t know she had a sense of humour”, "our relationship has changed" and “she is cheeky now”. These statements from those closest to the participants strongly suggest a development of a personal identity.
Two research questions are particularly relevant to the development of a self image:
Ø Could the AAC users be encouraged to tell
their own stories in a social way and if so how would this affect their
interactional skills?
The appropriate use of stories had to be modelled by researchers as the participants had little or no understanding of the pragmatic use of story telling for social interaction. For example, one of the participants, Yvonne[1], an 18 year old girl with cerebral palsy, was asked what had been happening lately. She answered that the mirror had fallen and she then laughed. Further questioning eventually revealed that her father had tried to hang a large mirror in the bathroom using sticky pads. The young girl and her friend had heard a huge bang as it had fallen off the wall and they had laughed at the foolishness of her father to think that it would stay up without screws. The full story allowed Yvonne to project her sense of humour which led to an entertaining interaction which was enjoyed by the whole group.
Anne, a 10 year old ambulant girl, used telegrammatic speech to make herself understood. Anne was considered to be a loner and needed to be prompted to tell a story in the early stages of the study. As the study progressed, Anne began to initiate the use of a story on a number of occasions when she wanted to relate an incident to someone. On one occasion, Anne retrieved a second story while relating the first in order to answer her speaking partner's question.
Colin is an 11 year-old with a mild motor impairment. His speech is largely unitelligble without contextual cues. At the end of the study his class teacher commented that he had come out of his own world to the extent that he can now joke with his peers. Further, his peers now ask more open questions of him due to the increased competence of his conversation. The communication system has allowed him to become a communication member of his peer group.
It is not always the desire to create the story that is absent but the experience of how to tell the story. It is essential to develop story telling skills. It is also perhaps fundamentally important to encourage experience of imaginative narration. Observations indicate that although participants with some oral ability did have pragmatic story telling skills prior to the intervention, they had learnt to communicate in telegrammatic utterances to ensure successful communication. Those participants with little or no intelligible speech used the system as their primary form of communication. However, those whose intelligibility decreased with utterance length tended to decrease their reliance on the system as their confidence grew. They then moved towards intentional use of it to back up poor intelligibility in specific circumstances.
Ø Would a story-based communication approach
lead to a more natural form of conversation; i.e. would the approach allow the
AAC users to share control of the conversation?
One parent of Alan, a young boy whose speech consists of one-to-two word utterances, reported that she no longer has to ask closed questions, offer choices, or initiate the conversation. No longer having to talk "at him", she feels, has changed their relationship and that the system has helped him realise he has something worth saying now that he is more likely to be understood
The researchers observed that successful communication tended to occur in environments where an “open question ” approach was used, encouraging questioning from participants. Classroom activities when teachers encouraged discussion and provided opportunities for students to direct activities, e.g. “News time” revealed particular progress. However, the system was obsolete in situations where staff controlled the conversation. Some teachers and other staff tended to use a “closed question” communication approach to reduce the risk of communication breakdown and this has a negative effect on the child’s ability to expand utterance length. This in turn affects the development of narrative skills.
There is a real issue that communication partners do not expect expanded utterance or narrative abilities from poor communicators and therefore the environment where these skills will be encouraged and developed is absent.
The experience of telling stories and jokes helped the
participants to develop pragmatic skills related to sharing control within a
conversation. Turn-taking is essential in many forms of jokes and riddles. Most
important, however, has been the development of self-esteem! All the
participants have developed a more positive image of themselves.
All of us face major challenges in the long maturation process from child to adult. Particular challenges are faced by disabled children, who tend to be treated differently from their non-disabled peers. It is natural to want to over-protect and to shield disabled children from mistakes and difficult situations. However, “cute” babies grow into adults who are no longer “adorable”. This is when disabled adults have to rely on personality and an ability to make, maintain and strengthen friendships. To do this, disabled persons need the tools to communicate more naturally.
The study confirms the importance of giving non-speaking children the ability to use narrative in conversation. Although Talk:Aboutä is currently the only AAC system which emphasises the use of narrative as a base for conversation, this system was designed for literate adults, not for young people with language and learning difficulties. Further work is needed to develop a communication system which will meet the needs of different users with different physical and cognitive functioning.
Communication is much more than expressing wants or needs or being able to answer questions on demand. Telling, sharing and exchanging stories facilitates the shaping and development of our personal identity, because, we are our stories!
This research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC). We are indebted to the participants, their parents, teachers and therapists for participating in this study. We would also like to thank Mrs Jennifer Francis and members of the advisory board: Prof. Alan Newell, Dr David Coghill, Yvonne Carling, Barbara Hughes and Don Johnston Special Needs Ltd.
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