Partner response to verbal play in communication with individuals with amnesia

Previous research into the communication of people with amnesia found that they, and their familiar communication partners, used verbal play less frequently than pairs without amnesia (Duff et al., 2009). This study attempts to analyze an additional dimension of playful language use: partner response to verbal play. A rubric was developed to rate verbal play response on a 0-5 scale. The rubric was used to rate partner response in four communication pairs containing one partner with amnesia and one familiar communication partner; and four healthy pairs for comparison. The responses of the experimenter participating in the conversations were also rated. While the study found no differences between the two groups in terms of the familiar communication partners or the experimenter, the participants with amnesia received significantly lower overall scores than participants without amnesia. The participants with amnesia also produced a significantly lower proportion of responses with multiple turns than did healthy participants. This result adds to the body of evidence that memory disorders can affect social interaction. The rubric developed for this study suggests a possible direction for including partner response in analyses of conversational discourse.