Spatiotemporal arrangement of objects in activities with people with dementia

Abstract

Purpose: This study shows how the spatial organization of objects and their use may impact locally produced order of activities and how that can affect the accomplishment of everyday activities by people with dementia.Methods: The study is based on ethnomethodological conversation analysis of eight and a half hours of video recordings in three different settings. Eighteen sequences of activities identified were multimodally transcribed and analyzed.Results: The availability or non-availability of objects, their arrangements and manipulations play a crucial role in the management of the order of activities and may present both challenges and facilitations for people with dementia. The organizations of objects directly influence the order of the activity, and the objects’ potential use may afford actions that deviate from the trajectory and the order of the main activity.Conclusions: One of the significant uses of objects is how they contribute to the perceptual field where attention is organized for building actions. Participants in activities modify the perceptual field by manipulating objects in the material surrounds in response to the relevancies resulting from the unfolding activities. Therefore, spatial contingency is significant in the accomplishment of activities by people with dementia. As it is not self-evident that verbal instructions may result in the instructed actions accordingly, the rearrangement of objects and making them timely available to people with dementia may increase the possibilities of keeping the order of the activities intact.