Professor Ray Wilkinson

Ray Wilkinson’s research focuses on human communication within everyday social interaction, and in particular how participants manage communication when one or more of them do not have the full set of linguistic or cognitive resources available to a neurotypical adult native language speaker. Much of his work investigates the nature of atypical interaction, in particular social interactions involving people with acquired brain damage such as aphasia and the communicative impairments secondary to dementia or traumatic brain injury.

He has also published on the development of interactional competence in normally-developing children, and on the communicative conduct of non-human primates. He is a co-author of SPPARC (Supporting Partners of People with Aphasia in Relationships and Conversation), a clinical assessment and intervention resource for speech and language therapists, and has published a number of papers on how interaction-focused intervention can improve everyday communication for people with aphasia and their significant others.