A Conversation Analytic Intervention to Help Neurologists Identify Diagnostically Relevant Linguistic Features in Seizure Patients’ Talk

Recent conversation analytic work has revealed that there are systematic differences between the ways in which patients with epilepsy and patients with “psychogenic” nonepileptic seizures describe their seizure experiences. But these differences may not become apparent if patients are exposed to traditional fact-oriented questioning. This article describes a one-day intervention workshop, informed by conversation analysis, which was designed to help doctors change their questioning style and solicit diagnostically useful narrative features. A comparison of video recordings of 38 routine consultations before the intervention, and 20 consultations after it, showed that the intervention had the desired effect. Doctors’ problem-presentation solicitation changed, and the patient responses were better suited to revealing diagnostically relevant features of their talk. Data are in British English.