The first research domain, Inclusion & Health, deals with language processing in relation to patients’ health, on understanding patients’ non-informational needs through their verbal behaviour and on adapting spoken and/or written verbal messages for the target audience (e.g., explaining medical terms, treatments or diagnosis for patients and their families).
Our research network focuses on problems of exclusion of (groups of) individuals in relation to language and communication difficulties as a result of some diseases or disorders (e.g., acquired brain-damaged injuries, emotional or neurodevelopmental disorders), disabilities (e.g., in the context of deafness) or due to ageing and cognitive decline, whether normal or pathological. There is of course a considerable body of research on these issues (see, a.o., Parr 2007; Hubert-Dibon et al. 2016; Palmer et al. 2016). However, our interdisciplinary added value stems from our ability to apply a variety of methodological approaches, in which each sub-discipline has in-depth expertise (automatic data analysis and annotation, discourse analysis, analysis of individuals’ language skills and cognitive processes involved) to the same dataset (e.g., patient narratives), which can thus be collected and then analyzed in a joint and shared manner.
This approach offers a better way to identify and evaluate individuals’ language and communication problems (e.g., lexicon impairments, incoherence phenomena, maladaptive communication in the context of interactions with relatives or care staff), thereby proposing methods of remediation for the people concerned and helping healthcare professionals to provide better care for patients and people in difficulty.