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Biomedical subjects

C Antaki

Publications and source records attributed to C Antaki.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Empowering words, disempowering actions: an analysis of interactions between staff members and people with learning disabilities in residents' meetings.

BACKGROUND: This study examined power dynamics in verbal interactions between care staff and people with learning disabilities. METHOD: Recordings of residents' meetings in a group home for people with learning disabilities were examined. RESULTS: The analysis showed some of the ways in which power was exercised in verbal interactions between care staff and residents. It was found that staff adopted various techniques to guide the discussion and produce certain kinds of statements and decisions. It could be said that in these cases, the staff were having to decide between two or more conflicting institutional objectives. CONCLUSION: The effect was that staff contributions sometimes produced interactional patterns which were contrary to the goal of encouraging the residents to speak up and have more say in the management of their home.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

Do people with schizophrenia display theory of mind deficits in clinical interactions?

BACKGROUND: Having a 'theory of mind' (ToM) means that one appreciates one's own and others' mental states, and that this appreciation guides interactions with others. It has been proposed that ToM is impaired in schizophrenia and experimental studies show that patients with schizophrenia have problems with ToM, particularly during acute episodes. The model predicts that communicative problems will result from ToM deficits. METHOD: We analysed 35 encounters (> 80 h of recordings) between mental health professionals and people with chronic schizophrenia (out-patient consultations and cognitive behaviour therapy sessions) using conversation analysis in order to identify how the participants used or failed to use ToM relevant skills in social interaction. RESULTS: Schizophrenics with ongoing positive and negative symptoms appropriately reported first and second order mental states of others and designed their contributions to conversations on the basis of what they thought their communicative partners knew and intended. Patients recognized that others do not share their delusions and attempted to reconcile others' beliefs with their own but problems arose when they try to warrant their delusional claims. They did not make the justification for their claim understandable for their interlocutor. Nevertheless, they did not fail to recognize that the justification for their claim is unconvincing. However, the ensuing disagreement did not lead them to modify their beliefs. CONCLUSIONS: Individuals with schizophrenia demonstrated intact ToM skills in conversational interactions. Psychotic beliefs persisted despite the realization they are not shared but not because patients cannot reflect on them and compare them with what others believe.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Questions and answers to psychological assessment schedules: hidden troubles in 'quality of life' interviews.

Quality of life (QOL) has become a topic of much debate in the learning difficulties literature. Increasing use is made of questionnaire-driven interview schedules in an effort to find out what clients believe in their own words. However, in this paper, the authors argue that the use made of such questionnaires may actually distort interviewees' 'own words' by severely underestimating the degree to which the questions and answers are changed by the subtle dynamics of the interview. In the first ever close examination of what actually happens in a QOL assessment interview, the qualitative insights of conversation analysis are used to show that the typical administration of a well-known instrument will involve: (1) distortions of the questions brought about by the need to paraphrase complex items, and the inevitable use of pre-questions and response listing; and perhaps more disturbingly, (2) distortions of answers brought about by interviewers' pursuit of legitimate answers and non-take-up of interviewees' matters. The authors believe that these difficulties make it hard for researchers to draw conclusions from simple aggregation of recorded responses to this questionnaire, and, perhaps, to any questionnaire using a fixed-response schedule. On the other hand, the kind of close evidence used here may allow inferences to be drawn about clients' feelings of well being, but even so, these will need to be cast in terms which acknowledge the interactive and constructive nature of feeling-avowals.

Humans↗
PubMed1988

Causal beliefs amongst families in therapy: attributions at the group level.

Whereas attribution has traditionally been regarded as an individual process, we argue that attributions can also be located at a group level. A study of the causal beliefs of 10 families undergoing family therapy is reported, which shows that attributional change can be identified as a family as well as an individual process. Families considered not to have 'changed' following therapy differed from the 'changing' families in attributing negative outcomes to more stable causes, but were similar in their increased use of internal attributions for other people's actions. This pattern is interpreted within family systems theory.

Adolescent↗