Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Heike Pichler
Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.
© 2017 Taylor & Francis Barriers to effective provider–patient communication take many forms that can be difficult to recognize and appropriately address. This paper offers probabilistic indicators for one such form, patient-produced “I don’t know” (IDK), distinguishing its use as a cognitive claim and its use as a strategy for resisting discussion of sensitive topics. A total of 95 audio-recorded psychiatrist–child interactions are drawn from a US-wide corpus of physician–patient consultations. From these, 376 patient-produced IDKs are extracted and coded for linguistic/social factors, including form, function, prosody, age, gender, and primary diagnosis. Two multiple logistic regressions are performed to determine the predictors of cognitive and resistive IDK functions respectively. Cognitive IDK uses are associated with the full form (p < 0.01) and unstressed prosody (p < 0.01). Use of resistive IDK is correlated with decreasing patient age (p < 0.01) and emotionally labile mental health diagnoses (p < 0.01). Cognitive and resistive IDK uses have distinctive linguistic and social distributions in psychiatrist–child interactions, where cognitive uses have two objectively identifiable linguistic characteristics and resistive uses are associated with certain patient types. Providers may learn to recognize cognitive and resistive IDK uses, thus acquiring the ability to correctly interpret interactional cues relevant to the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric mental health conditions.
Author(s): Hesson AM, Pichler H
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Health Communication
Year: 2018
Volume: 33
Issue: 7
Pages: 867-876
Online publication date: 13/07/2017
Acceptance date: 17/04/2017
Date deposited: 05/02/2017
ISSN (print): 1041-0236
ISSN (electronic): 1532-7027
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2017.1321160
DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2017.1321160
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
