Development of a framework capturing the interactions of people with dementia and their facilitators in virtual CST sessions: A proposal

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundTelehealth has been gaining much attention, especially since the COVID‐19 pandemic. A virtual version of Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST), based on the conventional face‐to‐face CST (Spector et al., 2003), has been developed, with feasibility reported in Perkins et al. (2022). The present study proposes an analytic framework for capturing the verbal and nonverbal interactions of people with dementia (PwD) and their facilitators during virtual CST sessions delivered via tablet computers and video conferencing tool.MethodExisting models/frameworks for capturing verbal and nonverbal interactions of PwD and their communication partners were identified and evaluated. Quantifiable parameters/features which are observable/applicable to virtual CST sessions were incorporated into the new framework.ResultA newly proposed framework, primarily based on the conversation analysis (Perkins et al., 1998) of PwD and coding system of co‐verbal gestures of people with aphasia (Kong et al., 2015), has been developed. Issues specific to virtual delivery of CST have been considered and accommodated in the framework.ConclusionThe proposed framework will help researchers investigate and quantify the verbal and nonverbal interactions during virtual CST. Its potential in enhancing treatment outcomes, in terms of training of facilitators, and investigations of the relation between the behaviors of PwD during sessions and treatment gains in different aspects, will be discussed.