Communicating with people living with dementia who are nonverbal: the creation of Adaptive Interaction

Ellis, M. and Astell, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6822-9472 (2017) Communicating with people living with dementia who are nonverbal: the creation of Adaptive Interaction. PLoS ONE, 12 (8). e0180395. ISSN 1932-6203 doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0180395

Abstract/Summary

Loss of verbal language production makes people with dementia appear unreachable. We previously presented a case study applying nonverbal communication techniques with a lady with dementia who could no longer speak, which we termed Adaptive Interaction. The current small-n study examines the applicability of Adaptive Interaction as a general tool for uncovering the communication repertoires of non-verbal individuals living with dementia. Communicative responses of 30 interaction sessions were coded and analysed in two conditions: Standard (Baseline) and Adaptive Interaction (Intervention). All participants retained the ability to interact plus a unique communication repertoire comprising a variety of nonverbal components, spanning eye gaze, emotion expression, and movement. In comparison to Baseline sessions, Intervention sessions were characterised by more smiling, looking at ME and imitation behaviour from the people with dementia. These findings allude to the potential of Adaptive Interaction as the basis for interacting with people living with dementia who can no longer speak.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/71953
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology
Publisher	Public Library of Science
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item