Reducing Social Isolation due to Communication Disorders in Adults with Dementia and their Families Social isolation is a major contributor to poorer health, quality of life, and even survival. Adults with Alzheimer’s and other dementias are at high risk for social isolation because their language, memory, and other cognitive impairments make it difficult to interact with others. Because of their cognitive-communication impairments, people with dementia increasingly depend on environmental accommodations to help them engage and interact with others. The most critical environmental accommodation for communication is the behavior of other people with whom the person interacts. Family members, who usually provide such support, may find it hard to do so because of how they are impacted by the communication disorder themselves (third-party disability) through increased care burden and loss of emotional closeness. The term ‘perceived social support’ refers to the help that people feel they have available to them in times of hardship. Our prior research has identified that perceived social support, as defined and measured in general healthcare domains, does not capture needed physical, attitudinal, and environmental supports for communication. While qualitative research suggests that communication partners are highly influential in keeping people with communication disorders active in home and community activities, little is known about: 1) the extent and nature of perceived social support for communication and how this influences life participation for people with dementia, and 2) the extent to which families experience third-party disability related to their loved-ones communication disorder, and how this impacts both their own social participation and their ability to provide communication support for their loved one with dementia. The long-term goal of this research is to help people with communication disorders and their families reduce social isolation and engage in fulfilling life participation by improving environmental communication support for patients and their families. The parent grant for this supplement is using survey methods to establish the psychometric properties of a new measure of social support for communication, and testing the hypothesis that the construct of perceived social support for communication is distinct from the general concept of perceived social support used in healthcare. The parent grant also explores how third-party disability contributes to reduced communicative participation for both patients and family. The parent grant includes adults with motor speech and voice disorders. This supplement extends that work to people with dementia by exploring the self-reported restrictions in communicative participation and perceived social support for communication in adults with mild / early dementia; as well as exploring third-party disability and communicative participation restrictions of family members of people along the...