Living with Late-Stage Dementia: Communication and Interaction

​This book investigates how people living with late-stage dementia can engage in communication and social interaction. Based on empirical research, it explores the remaining communicative resources of people living with cognitive impairment (e.g., intercorporeal interaction, bodily gestures, gaze), presenting the agency of the person with dementia as an integral part of their relations with others. The book provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for analyzing, describing, and understanding communication in late-stage dementia, and explores the use of video ethnography to record and analyze non-verbal, bodily interaction.

The authors skilfully bring together findings from their examinations of everyday interactions involving individuals living with late-stage dementia in nursing facilities, introducing the readers to the innovative theoretical and methodological approaches that undergird the fine-grained analyses at the heart of the book. The rich and nuanced case studies collected encompass embodied directives, habitual actions and objects, physical settings, assisted eating, and much more. An invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers at all levels in the fields of psychology, psychotherapy, social work, nursing, gerontology, and related disciplines, this volume makes an unparalleled contribution to current dementia research across the social sciences.

Lars-Christer Hydén is Professor in Social Psychology at Linköping University, Sweden. His research concerns how people living with dementia engage in social interaction using multimodal communicative resources as a way to sustain and negotiate everyday life and a sense of self.

Anna Ekström is Associate Professor in Speech-Language Pathology and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences at Linköping University, Sweden. A qualitative methods expert, her research focuses on populations with communicative impairments, including people with dementia. During the last ten years, she has continuously published withing the field of dementia studies.

Ali Reza Majlesi is Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Education at Stockholm University, Sweden. He conducts research on social interaction in everyday and institutional settings, involving participants with various cognitive and communicative abilities. His research focuses on embodiment and sense-making practices in social activities, encompassing face-to-face or mediated interactions.