Some Normative Goals for Conversation Training

Abstract

The conversation of three small groups of manual workers was observed in order to provide tangible goals for conversation training. A wide range of conversation styles emerged from the data, providing ranges of responding for various behaviours like percentages of short initiations, longer initiations, questions and length of latencies. Ranges of responding were also shown for the patterns of certain types of conversation involving initiations and reactions to these utterances. Despite the wide ranges of style in the conversation of the normal groups, their behaviour was in marked contrast to three small groups of socially inept psychiatric patients, in that, the patients were discrepant on every index of social behaviour. The study provides clear targets for conversation training programmes in terms of both the frequencies with which patients should engage in behaviour and the patterns of utterances with which patients might respond. To illustrate the way in which the data act as goals, patient groups are compared before and after treatment