Atypical Interaction Conference 2025

Digital communication support applications for people living with dementia
Digital communication supports for people with dementia have gained increasing attention due to the growing need for effective interventions to enhance their quality of life, where relation have a great impact. Dementia, characterized by cognitive impairments that affect memory, communication, and reasoning, often limits individuals' ability to interact socially and maintain meaningful connections. Digital communication tools, including applications, wearable devices, and virtual assistants, have emerged as innovative solutions to address these challenges. These technologies may facilitate communication by simplifying interactions, offering reminders, and providing accessible platforms for social engagement. For instance, specialized applications targeting communication may enable individuals to participate in social activities. Additionally, digital platforms can support caregivers by enhancing communication strategies tailored to the individual. Research suggests that these tools can reduce social isolation, strengthen relations, improve emotional well-being, and promote independence in people with dementia. However, their effectiveness is often influenced by factors such as the stage of dementia, ease of use, and accessibility. In this presentation I will present results from studies of people with dementia in different situations where digital technology is used. I will also present results from interview studies on the experiences of people with dementia and their significant other regarding the use of digital technology in their everyday life.

Christina Samuelsson is a Professor in the Division of Speech and Language Pathology at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, a guest Professor at the division of Sensory Organs and Communication at Linköping University, and a qualified speech and language therapist. Her research focuses on communication disabilities such as dementia, aphasia, and developmental language disorders, and she explores their impact on everyday interaction. She leads the new network Enabling Vocies: Exploring AI Tools to support People with Acquired Communication Disabilities.

Exploring Comparative Research in Aided Communication: Insights from Conversation Analysis and Methodological Challenges
Conversations are constructed in situ as a result of the shared actions of interaction partners, making them unique and impossible to replicate exactly. However, with the accumulation of conversation analytical (CA) research, scholars have identified typical and recurring interaction practices across various datasets, including atypical ones. Today, we recognize, for example, how aided communication differs from typical spoken interaction and how this should be considered in guiding communication partners or developing communication aids. Utilizing CA knowledge in clinical work with aided communicators is, however, rare. There are only a few researchers focusing on aided interaction, and the research is quite fragmented. In this presentation, I will present our plans to conduct comparative interaction research in aided communication. Our aim is to develop an analytical tool for the systematic exploration of different cross-sectional datasets and methodological strategies for demonstrating changes in longitudinal datasets of everyday interaction. I will also present examples from the data of our rehabilitation project and discuss the methodological challenges posed by the unique nature of conversations for comparative interaction research.

Irina Savolainen is a University Lecturer in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology at the University of Helsinki and a licensed speech and language therapist. Her research focuses on aided interaction and interventions for aided communication. She leads the research project Aided Communication in Rehabilitation, which explores the goals and implementation of rehabilitation, as well as the changes that occur after rehabilitation. Together with rehabilitation stakeholders, she has developed an intervention model called Reco (Relaxed Communication), which is based on video reflections and utilizes principles of conversation analysis.

What can conversation analysis contribute to understanding interactions involving people with autism?
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that is characterised by distinctive kinds of social interaction and communication and in repetitive interests and behaviour (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; World Health Organization, 1992, 2018). Whilst much of the research into autism has used experimental methods, or theoretically based coding tools, for over 30 years, the discovery-oriented approach of conversation analysis (CA) has been used to examine recordings of naturally occurring interactions involving people with autism. Taking research that I've conducted with colleagues and students focusing on parents' and carers' support for children with autism as a point of departure, this presentation examines the diversity of work that has used CA to study autism. I discuss some of the challenges and opportunities of using CA to study autism and what the detailed analysis of interactions involving people with autism can tell us about human social interaction.

John P. Rae is Reader in Psychology in the School of Psychology, University of Roehampton, London, UK. His research focuses on talk and body movement in social interaction in both informal and service-related to settings, including psychotherapy. He is interested in human diversity, particularly interactions involving participants with autism. He co-edited Atypical interaction: the impact payments with everyday life (with Ray Wilkinson and Gitte Rasmussen, Palgrave, 2020) and Bridging the gap between conversation analysis and poetics (with Raymond F Person, Jr. and Robin Wooffitt, Routledge, 2022).