Neurologic/Psychiatric Disorders

Atypical interaction is a subfield of conversation analysis that examines how communication impairments stemming from a disorder such as aphasia, dementia, or serious mental illness manifest in naturally occurring interactions. This work has historically prioritized ordinary conversation in familiar home environments as the context of investigation, considering it to provide an ecologically valid account of the manifestation and impact of impairment. Researchers of atypical interaction orient to ordinary interactions as an achievement, identifying not only communicative challenges but also the preserved cognitive and communicative resources participants draw on to functionally participate in everyday activities. Overall, this work demonstrates that what transpires during social interactions between persons with a particular diagnosis and their collaborators impacts how (in)competence manifests. Additionally, a robust body of work examining patient–clinician communication in institutional contexts exists. For instance, this research has illuminated how clinicians directly and indirectly communicate dementia diagnoses and to whom, how psychiatrists design treatment recommendations to enact shared decision making, and how psychotherapists discursively orient to therapeutic values. While much of the work on atypical interaction has taken the form of case studies, several scholars have detailed guidelines for how conversation‐analytic approaches can be appropriately integrated with clinical research and the development of behavioral interventions.