Where the transcript was published

PhD Thesis:
Korkiakangas, T. (2011). Eye-Gaze in Multimodal Interactions involving Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. PhD Thesis, University of Roehampton.

Other publications:
Korkiakangas, T., & Rae, J. (In Press). The interactional use of eye-gaze in children with autism spectrum disorders. Interaction Studies.

Korkiakangas, T., & Rae, J. (2013). Gearing up to a new activity: how teachers use object adjustments to manage the attention of children with autism. Augmentative and Alternative Communication 29(1): 83-103. doi: 10.3109/07434618.2013.767488.

Korkiakangas, T., Rae, J., & Dickerson, P. (2012). The interactional work of repeated talk between a teacher and a child with autism. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders 3(1): 1-25.

Link to transcript

How the transcript was made

Transcriptions were made by hand using Microsoft Word. First, talk (if any) was transcribed from the video recordings using the conventions developed by Gail Jefferson (in Atkinson & Heritage, 1984). I translated the original talk from Finnish by placing the English translation below the spoken utterances. Secondly, non-spoken behaviours, such as eye-gaze, gestures, body movements, facial expressions, and handling of objects were included in the transcripts. The transcription of eye-gaze followed mostly the conventions developed by Charles Goodwin (1981). This usually shows the gaze activity of a speaking party above their transcribed talk, and the gaze activity of a recipient below the transcribed talk.

Other non-spoken activities (apart from gaze) were included within parentheses and mapped with the transcribed talk (if any). For this mapping I used the Tables feature in Microsoft Word. This enabled me to draw lines to indicate the onset and duration of non-spoken activities. For example, I indicated the point at which a child shifted their gaze to a teacher by using the conventions developed by Goodwin. Then, I indicated the child’s other conduct (such as smiling, frowning, gesturing, moving…) as they turned to look at their teacher. Using the drawing tools I could also indicate what the teacher was doing when the child was gazing at them, that is, how they responded to the child. Further, I used photo stills within the transcripts to illustrate these activities (I had consent to use photos). I always placed a photo below the line of transcription and used arrows to point at the place in talk and action that the frames illustrate.

Rationale for the design

The transcripts were created for the purpose of sequential examination of interactions through Conversation Analysis. The transcripts include the actions of all the parties involved in a stretch of interaction. This enables an analysis of action on a turn-by-turn basis (e.g., how one party’s actions are responsive to another party’s actions).

Social interactions do not only involve talk (and sometimes involve no talk at all), and this is why all the observed conduct (spoken and non-spoken) has been transcribed. Conversation analysis is concerned with the organization of interactions, and despite what the name suggests, the analysis is not merely concerned with talk (or conversations), but rather with all the resources that participants use in interactions.

The roots of Conversation Analysis can be traced to the 1960’s California where it developed as a study of the organisation of talk and spoken practices (the seminal studies examined audio-recorded telephone calls; see Sacks, 1992; Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974). However, with the wider availability of video-recording equipment, conversation analysts began to examine how gaze, body movement, gestures and the like are used in interactions alongside, or independently of, talk. (see e.g., Heath, 1986; Heath, Hindmarsh, & Luff, 2010).

References:
Atkinson, J. M. & Heritage, J. (Eds.) (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press.

Heath, C. (1986). Body movement and speech in medical interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heath, C., Hindmarsh, J., & Luff, P. (2010). Video in qualitative research: Analysing social interaction in everyday life. Sage, London.

Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation, I–II. 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.

Purpose of the transcript

I used this transcription format throughout my thesis to examine how children with autism and their co-participants organised their interactions in familiar settings. I was mainly concerned with the use of eye-gaze, i.e., how these children used eye-gaze for interactional purposes (autism is generally characterized by an impaired capacity for social eye-gaze). The careful transcription enabled me to demonstrate that, in mundane interactions, these children were able to use eye-gaze for social purposes, for example, to address a next speaker, pursue a response from a co-participant, and to direct attention to relevant objects during educational tasks.

I used this transcription format in a paper, “The Interactional Use of Eye-Gaze in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders” for Interaction Studies (In Press).

I used a slightly different transcription format in a paper, “Gearing up to a new activity: how teachers use object adjustments to manage the attention of children with autism” (2013), to better suit the transcription format of the journal (Augmentative and Alternative Communication [AAC]). This was a challenging task, as I had to combine both Goodwin/Jefferson and AAC formats together. I also had to argue for the importance of showing time lapses of silent intervals (in seconds) as “(———1)” rather than as “(1.0)”. The former is not commonly used in the journal, however I had to use this format in order to demonstrate exactly where some non-spoken activity occurred during a tenth of a second (marked by a dash – ).