Clinical research on Collaborative Referencing Intervention (CRI)
Word finding or naming deficits are a hallmark of aphasia that persists in the chronic phase of recovery. We are drawing on distributed theories of communication that conceptualize communication as a creative and emergent accomplishment and theorize referencing (naming and pointing to things, ideas, people, and so on) as a collaborative process speakers and listeners must engage in together within specific interactions (e.g., Clark, 1992; Hanks, 1990). We have designed the collaborative referencing game as a clinical intervention situated within a rich communicative environment. Using the distributed perspective, we are studying the effects of the collaborative referencing intervention on participants’ communication, participation and confidence.