The impact of Parkinson’s Disease on everyday conversation

Conversing with Parkinson´s Disease aims to investigate the effects on conversation of a person with Parkinson´s disease, both from the point of view of the person with Parkinson´s disease, and of their conversational partner.

We will also investigate how individual cognitive and linguistic behaviours impact on interactive communication for people with Parkinson´s disease.

To do so, we will collect and analyse data of conversations between a person with Parkinson´s disease and different familiar and unfamiliar conversational partners from both a qualitative and quantitative perspective.

Specifically we will investigate: 1) How does Parkinson´s disease affect people´s linguistic, cognitive and conversational abilities, and what are the connections between these? 2) How do familiar and unfamiliar conversational partners linguistically and interactionally adapt to the person with Parkinson´s disease to facilitate communication? 3) How do interactions with a person with Parkinson´s disease change over time, both within a conversation and over longer timescales?

Our research will lead to a greater understanding of conversational practices in conversations with a person with Parkinson´s disease. These can inform potential practices for therapists and patients´ significant others.

Our results will also offer insights into how results on clinical language tests can be interpreted and how they relate to people´s everyday interactions.