Young adults' concerns and coping strategies related to their face-to-face interactions with their grandparents/great-grandparents with dementia were explored through the lens of a solidarity-conflict conceptual framework. Participants indicated concerns about their inability to maintain the relational connection, not knowing what to say or how to behave, their lack of perspective-taking skills and emotion-regulation strategies, interacting with an ever-changing other, as well as concerns about other co-participants in the interaction. Participants' coping strategies were driven by two interaction motives: maintaining solidarity (e.g., desire to maintain and improve the interaction with the grandparent by seeking the other's company, loving the other, and maintaining the other's personhood) and dealing with conflict (e.g., dealing with self-focused concerns about lack of skills and knowledge by engaging in substitute avenues for communication and down-regulating negative affect). Implications for improving interactions between young adults and their grandparents/great-grandparents with dementia are discussed.

Background and objectives Advocates for dementia-friendly communities emphasize the need for the public to know about the dementias and to experience social comfort with people having dementia. This research tested a conceptual model of influences on social comfort, including two types of dementia knowledge and personal dementia fear. Research design and methods Data were collected from 645 Wisconsin residents through an online platform (Qualtrics®) and community outreach efforts. A hierarchical multiple regression was conducted and its results were mapped onto a figure representing the conceptual model of social comfort. Results Greater personhood-based knowledge (based on observations of the capabilities and perspectives of persons with dementia) and less personal dementia fear significantly predicted higher levels of social comfort, while biomedical knowledge did not. Although more personhood-based knowledge improved overall comfort regardless of the level of biomedical knowledge, people with higher levels of biomedical knowledge benefitted the most from having personhood-based knowledge. Discussion and implications These findings suggest that activities that promote personhood-based knowledge may enhance social comfort. These activities may be most effective for individuals who already have a high level of biomedical knowledge about people with dementia. Community members and professionals ought to strike a balance between biomedical knowledge and personhood-based knowledge, as the two together may be associated with higher levels of social comfort. This could benefit the promotion of dementia-friendly community initiatives.

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We examined differences in perspective taking and empathic emotions in letters written by young adults with grandparents with dementia (GD; N = 21) versus those with grandparents without dementia (GND; N = 45). College students wrote a letter to either their grandparent with dementia or their grandparent without dementia. The letters were coded for perspective taking and empathic emotions. Perspective taking was operationalized as participants’ scores on a perspective-taking orientation scale as well as number of second-person pronouns and number of shared experiences in the letters. Compared with participants in the GND group, those in the GDs group reported greater perspective taking, higher levels of tenderness and empathic distress, but similar levels of sympathy toward their grandparent. These findings suggest that interpersonal interventions should capitalize on family members’ higher orientation toward taking the perspective of their family member with dementia and their empathic feelings of tenderness toward that person.

Although evidence is mounting that personalized music has beneficial effects for long-term care residents with dementia, little research has examined the effects of personalized music for the majority of persons with dementia living at home. These individuals live at home with care partners who may also benefit from having music that is personalized for their loved one. Using the Music & MemorySM program of personalized playlists delivered via iPod Shuffles®, the current study examined the effects of the Music & Memory program for persons with dementia by using the Bath Assessment of Subjective Quality of Life in Dementia scale and a Music Listening Experience Scale developed for this study. We also administered three scales that captured care partner experiences. Transcripts of the Bath Assessment of Subjective Quality of Life in Dementia administrations at the beginning of the study and 3 months later, plus interviews about the Music & Memory program, were then analyzed using the interpretive phenomenological analysis method. Themes about the Music & Memory program and life living with dementia for from diagnosed persons and their care partners are discussed.