Abstract
Children’s mental health is a growing concern for both healthcare institutions and academic research, driven by the recognition that mental health issues also affect the younger members of society and that the incidence of these problems is increasing (www.mentalhealth.org.uk). Children’s mental health problems can include anxiety, conduct disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression; however, diagnoses are always advanced with caution as children are highly responsive to changes in their environment and their reactions can be extremely variable and fluid. Intellectual disabilities are also often considered under the umbrella of children’s mental health, partly because of the impact that the disability itself may have on the child’s psychological well-being. In the following, I will provide a review of research studies conducted within a conversation analysis (CA) framework across the whole range of children’s mental health and intellectual disabilities, trying to illustrate how and why CA can be a useful methodological approach for the study of these fields.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Antaki, C. (1999). Assessing quality of life of persons with a learning disability: How setting lower standards may inflate well-being scores. Qualitative Health Research, 9, 437–454.
Antaki, C., Vehviläinen S., & Leudar, I. (Eds.) (2008). Conversation analysis and psychotherapy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aronsson, K., & Cederborg A. C. (1996). Coming of age in family therapy talk: Perspective setting in multiparty problem formulations. Discourse Processes, 21(2), 191–212.
Atkinson, M. J., & Heritage, J. (Eds.) (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bagatell, N., & Solomon, O. (Eds.) (2008). Rethinking autism, rethinking anthropology. Ethos, 38(1), i–ii (special issue).
Bara, B. G., Bucciarelli, M., & Colle, L. (2001). Communicative abilities in autism: Evidence for attentional deficits. Brain and Language, 77(2), 216–240.
Baron-Cohen, S. (1996). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bateson G., Jackson D., Haley J., & Weakland J. (1956). Toward a theory of Schizophrenia. Behavioral Science, 1(4), 251–254.
Beebe, B., Jaffe, J., Buck, K., Cohen, P., Feldstein, S., & Andrews, H. (2008). Six-week postpartum maternal depressive symptoms and 4-month mother-infant self — and interactive contingency. Infant Mental Health Journal, 29(5), 442–471.
Berducci, D. (2010). From infants’ reacting to understanding: Grounding mature communication and sociality through turn-taking and sequencing. Psychology of Language and Communication, 14(1), 3–27.
Binet, A., & Simon, T. (1916). The development of intelligence in children: The Binet-Simon scale (No. 11). New Jersey: Williams & Wilkins Company.
Binet A., Simon, T., & Town, C. H. (1913). A method of measuring the development of the intelligence of young children. Lincoln, IL: Courier.
Brouwer, C. E., Dennis, D., Ferm, U., Hougaard, A. R., Rasmussen, G., & Thunberg, G. (2011). Treating the actions of children as sensible: Investigating structures in interactions between children with disabilities and their parents. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorder, 1(2), 153–182.
Butler, C. W., & Wilkinson, R. (2013). Mobilising recipiency: Child participation and ‘rights to speak’ in multi-party family interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 50(1), 37–51.
Bysouth, D. (2012). Conversation analysis and therapy. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics. Blackwell Publishing: Wiley online.
Capps, L., & Ochs, E. (1995). Constructing panic: The discourse of agoraphobia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Capps, L., Sigman, M., Sena, R., Henker, B., & Whalen, C. (1996). Fear, anxiety, and perceived control in children of agoraphobic parents. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 37(4), 445–452.
Clemente, I., Lee, S. H., & Heritage, J. (2008). Children in chronic pain: Promoting pediatric patients’ symptom accounts in tertiary care. Social Science & Medicine, 66(6), 1418–1428.
Danby, S. J., Butler C., & Emmison, M. (2009). When ‘listeners can’t talk’: Comparing active listening in opening sequences of telephone and online counselling. Australian Journal of Communication, 36(3), 91–114.
Drew, P. (2003). Comparative analysis of talk-in-interaction in different institutional settings: A sketch. In P. Glenn, C. D. LeBaron, & J. Mandelbaum (Eds.), Studies in language and social interaction: In honor of Robert Hopper (pp. 249–263). New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.
Du Bois, J. W., Hobson, R. P., & Hobson, J. A. (2014). Dialogic resonance and intersubjective engagement in autism. Cognitive Linguistics, 25(3), 411–441.
Edwards D., & Potter, J. (2005). Discursive psychology, mental states and descriptions. In H. te Molder & J. Potter (Eds.), Conversation and cognition (pp. 241–259). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Esposito, G., Nakazawa J., Venuti P., & Bornstein, M. H. (2013). Componential deconstruction of infant distress vocalizations via tree-based models: A study of cry in autism spectrum disorder and typical development. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(9), 2717–2724.
Fantasia V. (2015). Exploring infants’ cooperative participation in early social routines. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Portsmouth UK.
Fasulo, A., & Fiore F. (2007). A valid person: Non-competence as a conversational outcome. In A. Hepburn & S. Wiggins (Eds.), Discursive research in practice: New approaches to psychology and interaction (pp. 224–247). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Forrester, M. (2010). Ethnomethodology and adult—child conversation: Whose development? In H. Gardner & M. Forrester (Eds.), Analysing interactions in childhood: Insights from conversation analysis (pp. 42–58). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Heath, C., & Luff, P. (2000). Technology in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hepburn, A., & Potter, J. (2010). Interrogating tears: Some uses of ‘tag questions’ in a child protection helpline. In A. F. Freed & S. Ehrlich (Eds.), ‘Why do you ask?’: The function of questions in institutional discourse (pp. 69–86). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heritage J., & Clayman, S. (2011). Talk in action: Interactions, identities, and institutions. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hutchby, I. (2002). Resisting the incitement to talk in child counseling: Aspects of the utterance ‘I don’t know’. Discourse Studies, 4, 147–168.
Hutchby, I. (2007). The discourse of child counselling. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hutchby, I. (2010). Feelings-talk and therapeutic vision in child-counsellor interaction. In H. Gardner & M. A. Forrester (Eds.), Analysing interactions in childhood: Insights from conversation analysis (pp. 146–162). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. H. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation (pp. 13–23). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Kaye, K., & Brazelton, T. B. (1971). Mother-infant interaction in the organization of sucking. Paper presented at the Meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, Minneapolis, MN, April 1971.
Kidwell, M. (2012). Interaction among children. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Happé, F., & Frith, U. (2006). The weak coherence account: Detail-focused cognitive style in autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36(1), 5–25.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Llewellyn, N., & Hindmarsh, J. (Eds.) (2010). Organisation, interaction and practice: Studies of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Local, J., & Wootton, A. (1995). Interactional and phonetics aspects of immediate echolalia in autism: A case study. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 9, 155–184.
Lovejoy, M. C., Graczyk P. A., O’Hare, E., & Neuman, G. (2000). Maternal depression and parenting behavior: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 20(5), 561–592.
Maynard, D. W. (2005). Social actions, gestalt coherence, and designations of disability: Lessons from and about autism. Social Problems, 52(4), 499–524.
Maynard, D. W. (2012). Everyone and no one to turn to: Intellectual roots and contexts for conversation analysis. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 11–31). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Maynard, D. W., Houtkoop-Steenstra, H., Schaeffer, N. C., & van der Zouwen, H. (Eds.) (2002). Standardization and tacit knowledge: Interaction and practice in the survey interview. New York: John Wiley.
Maynard D. W., & Marlaire, C. L. (1992). Good reasons for bad testing performance: The interactional substrate of educational exams. Qualitative Sociology, 15(2), 177–202.
McCabe, R., Khanom, H., Bailey, P., & Priebe, S. (2013). Shared decision-making in ongoing outpatient psychiatric treatment. Patient Education and Counseling, 91(3), 326–328.
McCabe, R., Leudar I., & Antaki, C. (2004). Do people with schizophrenia display theory of mind deficits in clinical interactions? Psychological Medicine, 34(3), 401–412.
Murray, L., & Cooper, J. (Eds.) (1997). Postpartum Depression and Child Development. New York & London: The Guilford Press.
Ochs, E., Kremer-Sadlik, T., Sirota, K. G., & Solomon, O. (2004). Autism and the social world: An anthropological perspective. Discourse Studies, 6(2), 147–183.
Ochs, E., Kremer-Sadlik, T., Solomon, O., & Sirota, K. G. (2001). Inclusion as social practice: Views of children with autism. Social Development, 10(3), 399–419.
Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B. B. (Eds.) (1983). Acquiring conversational competence. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Ochs, E., & Solomon, O. (2004). Practical logic and autism. In R. Edgerton & C. Casey (Eds.), A Companion to psychological anthropology: Modernity and psychocultural change (pp. 140–167). Oxford: Blackwell.
O’Reilly, M. (2005). ‘What seems to be the problem?’ A myriad of terms for mental health and behavioural concerns. Disability Studies Quarterly, 25(4) (online journal article). Retrieved July 12, 2014 from www.dsq-sds.org.
O’Reilly, M. (2008). What value is there in children’s talk? Investigating family therapists’ interruptions of parents and children during the therapeutic process. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(3), 507–524.
O’Reilly M., Taylor, H., & Vostanis, P. (2009). ‘Nuts, schiz, psycho’: An exploration of young homeless people’s perceptions and dilemmas of defining mental health. Social Science and Medicine, 68(9), 1737–1744.
Peeters, T. (1997). Autism: From theoretical understanding to educational intervention. New York: Wiley.
Peräkylä, A. (2008). Psychoanalysis and conversation analysis: Interpretation, affect and intersubjectivity. In A. Peräkylä, C. Antaki, S. Vehviläinen, & I. Leudar (Eds.), Conversation analysis and psychotherapy (pp. 100–119). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peräkylä, A. (2012). Conversation analysis in psychotherapy. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 551–574). West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Peräkylä, A., & Vehviläinen, S. (2003). Conversation analysis and the professional stocks of interactional knowledge. Discourse & Society, 14(6), 727–750.
Peskett, R., & Wootton, A. J. (1985). Turn-taking and overlap in the speech of young Down’s syndrome children. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 29(3), 263–273.
Rączaszek-Leonardi, J., Nomikou, I., & Rohlfing, K. J. (2013). Young children’s dialogical actions: The beginnings of purposeful intersubjectivity. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, 5(3), 210–221.
Reck, C., Noe, D., Stefenelli, U., Fuchs, T., Cenciotti, F., Stehle, E., Mundt, C., Downing, G., & Tronick, E. Z. (2011). Interactive coordination of currently depressed inpatient mothers and their infants during the postpartum period. Infant Mental Health Journal, 32(5), 542–562.
Reddy, V. (2008). How infants know minds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Richards, K., & Seedhouse, P. (2007). Applying conversation analysis. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation, edited by G. Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50, 696–735.
Schegloff, E. A. (2000). On granularity. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 715–720.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction, vol. 1: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schuler, A. L. (2003). Beyond echoplaylia. Promoting language in children with autism. Autism, 7(4), 455–469.
Shakespeare, P. (1998). Aspects of confused speech: A study of verbal interaction between confused and normal speakers. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Sidnell, J. (2010). Questioning repeats in the talk of four-year-old children. In H. Garder & M. Forrester (Eds.), Analysing interactions in childhood: Insights from conversation analysis (pp. 103–127). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Sidnell J., & Stivers T. (Eds.) (2012). The handbook of conversation analysis. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Sterponi, L., & Fasulo, A. (2010). How to go on: Intersubjectivity and progressivity in the communication of a child with autism. Ethos, 38(1), 116–142.
Sterponi L., & Shankey, J. (2014). Rethinking echolalia: Repetition as interactional resource in the communication of a child with autism. Journal of Child Language, 41(2), 275–304.
Stivers, T. (2012). Physician–child interaction: When children answer physicians’ questions in routine medical encounters. Patient Education and Counseling, 87(1), 3–9.
Tarlin, K., Perkins, M. R., & Stojanovik, V. (2006). Conversational success in Williams syndrome: Communication in the face of cognitive and linguistic limitations. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 20(7–8), 583–590.
Tarplee, C., & Barrow, E. (1999). Delayed echoing as an interactional resource: A case study of a three-year-old child on the autistic spectrum. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics6, 449–82.
ten Have, P. (1999). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide. London: Sage.
Trevarthen, C. (1979). Communication and cooperation in early infancy: A description of primary intersubjectivity. In M. Bullowa (Ed.), Before speech: The beginning of interpersonal communication (pp. 321–348). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trevarthen, C., Aitken, K., Papoudi, D., & Robarts, J. (1998). Children with autism: Diagnosis and intervention to meet their needs. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Wells, B., Corrin J., & Local, J. (2008). Prosody and interaction in atypical and typical language development. Travaux Neuchâtelois de Linguistique, 49, 135–151.
Wootton, A. J. (1997). Interaction and the development of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wootton, A. J. (1999). An investigation of delayed echoing in a child with autism. First Language, 19, 359–381.
Wootton, A. J. (2002). Interactional contrasts between typically developing children and those with autism, Asperger’s syndrome, and pragmatic impairment. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 13(2), 133–159.
Recommended reading
• Fasulo, A., & Fiore F. (2007). A valid person: Non-competence as a conversational outcome. In A. Hepburn & S. Wiggins (Eds.), Discursive research in practice: New approaches to psychology and interaction (pp. 224–247). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Peräkylä, A. (2008). Psychoanalysis and conversation analysis: Interpretation, affect and intersubjectivity. In A. Peräkylä, C. Antaki, S. Vehviläinen, & I. Leudar (Eds.), Conversation analysis and psychotherapy (pp. 100–119). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sidnell, J. (2010). Questioning repeats in the talk of four-year-old children. In H. Garder & M. Forrester (Eds.). Analysing interactions in childhood: Insights from conversation analysis (pp. 103–127). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Wootton, A. J. (1997). Interaction and the development of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Alessandra Fasulo
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fasulo, A. (2015). The Value of Conversation Analysis for the Study of Children’s Mental Health. In: O’Reilly, M., Lester, J.N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Child Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428318_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428318_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-57695-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-42831-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)