HCSNet Workshop on Narrative & Communication Disorders

Details Title: HCSNet Workshop on Narrative & Communication Disorders
Date: 13-14 September 2008
Location: The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Gryphon Gallery
Contact: Associate Professor Lesley Stirling lesleyfs@unimelb.edu.au or Dr Susan Douglas sdouglas@unimelb.edu.au

Links

Call for Participation

Introduction

The aim of this workshop is to bring together Australian and international researchers with an interest in narrative and communication disorders. The workshop will address developmental and acquired disorders of both child and adult language. The intention is to take a truly interdisciplinary approach, involving speakers and participants from a range of areas covered by the broad domain of ‘cognitive science’, and to generate fruitful leads and directions for further research. Thus we expect that researchers from linguistics, psychology, speech pathology, psychiatry, computer science, cognitive neuroscience and other areas will find the workshop of interest.

The cognitive tasks involved in the production and comprehension of narrative are complex and not fully understood – including such things as the negotiation of multi-agent mental state ascriptions, perspective marking and maintenance of higher-level structural coherence.

Much narrative data has been collected and analysed in relation to populations with communication disorders with the expectation that this genre holds promise in furthering our understanding of language and cognition and informing the development of therapeutic interventions. It appears that the potential of this approach has yet to be fully realised and there is a sense amongst researchers in this area that there is an opportunity to explicitly identify obstacles to progress.

These might include the need to develop more refined and revealing linguistic analytic tools and metrics of performance. Furthermore, there are a range of methodological issues which some researchers have discussed in print and which this workshop offers an opportunity to address. (These include: To what extent do methodological differences in elicitation of narratives affect the conclusions we can draw - e.g. use of pictures vs verbal stimuli; kind of narrative? Are there other methods of collecting or analysing narratives which would be useful? How does the type of analysis chosen affect the results – e.g. at a very broad level, quantitative vs. qualitative? Do different types of narrative give rise to different pictures of abilities and deficits?)

In addition, the developmental or longitudinal perspective still offers many promising avenues of investigation: What do we know about the development of narrative skills over time in typical compared with atypical populations? How can we measure this? What insights are derivable for both child language development and language rehabilitation?

Proposed Outcomes

The workshop will offer a forum for these and related questions to be addressed in a fruitful and exciting way, with opportunities for research presentation and discussion in a multi-disciplinary setting. A refereed publication of a selection of the papers in the form of a journal special issue is anticipated as a key outcome of the workshop.

Invited Speakers

A number of international visitors, together with prominent Australian researchers in this area, will form the basis of a stimulating and interactive workshop.

Confirmed international speakers include:

Dr. Olga Solomon, Research Assistant Professor, University of Southern California Division of Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy, Los Angeles. Olga Solomon has a background in anthropology and has conducted collaborative research on the “Ethnography of Autism” with Professor Elinor Ochs through the UCLA Sloan Center on the Everyday Life of Families, looking at social interaction and socialization. A special issue of the journal Discourse Studies reported some of the results of this work in 2004. One focus of her own research has been the narrative competence of children with autism compared with typically developing children, looking at everyday narrative activity recorded in naturalistic conversational settings.

Dr. Susan Leekam, Reader, Department of Psychology and Director, Child Development Research Unit, Durham University. Sue Leekam’s extensive and broadly based research on the cognitive and social development of children with autism spectrum disorders and related conditions is well known. She has a particular interest in social interaction and the development of language. Research with Lucy Carey on narrative in autism has led her to an interest in methodological issues in research on narrative and communication disorders.

Dr. Nan Bernstein Ratner, Professor and Chairman, Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland at College Park. Nan Ratner has a background in Child Study, Speech-Language Pathology and Applied Psycholinguistics. She has published extensively in the area of language acquisition and fluency in children. Her current research focuses on the origins of stuttering in young children, the interactions between fluency and language development in typical and language-impaired children (with Leslie Rescorla of Bryn Mawr College), and predictors of language acquisition in infants (with the late Peter Jusczyk of Johns Hopkins University and HESP colleague Rochelle Newman). Her interest in narrative is focused on narratives produced by children with epilepsy, children with histories of expressive language impairment, and preschool children who were infant participants in speech processing studies.

Participation and Format

A provisional program for the workshop is now available to download. Regretfully, Dr Olga Solomon is no longer able to join us in person. However, we are very pleased to announce that Dr Solomon and Dr Nan Bernstein Ratner will be giving plenary talks via videoconference.

Funding

HCSNet members from outside the Melbourne area are invited to apply for a HCSNet grant of up to $500 for travel and accommodation. Preference will be given to applicants who are presenting at the workshop.

Postgraduate students residing outside the Melbourne area are also eligible to apply for funding of up to $500 to attend the workshop.

If you wish to be considered for a travel grant as a non-presenting workshop attendee (dependent on funding availability), please send a 150 word statement detailing your interest in this workshop to Lesley Stirling (lesleyfs@unimelb.edu.au) by June 30th 2008.

Travel grants are still available, so please send your application if you would like assistance.

Workshop Dinner

There will be a self-funded workshop dinner on Saturday September 13th at one of the many fabulous, reasonably-priced restaurants in the Carlton area. More details will be provided later.

Registration

Please note, participation is now free for all workshop attendees. However, we ask that you register by August 11th for catering purposes. To register your attendance, download the registration form and return to Lesley Stirling by email (lesleyfs@unimelb.edu.au) or fax (+61 3 9499 1812).

Important Dates

June 2nd 2008: due date for submission of abstracts
June 16th 2008: notification of acceptance for paper and poster presentations
June 30th 2008: final date for travel grant applications
July 14th 2008: notification of awarding of travel grants to recipients * extended
August 11th 2008: due date for registration
September 13th-14th: Workshop