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Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health
Senior Citizens with Dementia Can Still Tap into
Memory to Give Advice
Dementia patients successful giving advice, teaching a cooking lesson
July 17, 2006 Asking a senior citizen with
dementia what he or she had for breakfast may bring just a blank stare.
But ask for advice about what is the healthiest breakfast for a person
to eat and you may get more information that you expected. That is the
indication from a new study that finds dementia may rob an older person
of memory and focus, but the ability to offer timeless advice about
life's big questions seems to be preserved.
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Katinka Dijkstra, assistant professor of
psychology, and Michelle Bourgeois, professor of communication
disorders, both of Florida State University, and colleagues from Long
Island University and George Washington University have found that older
adults with moderate to severe symptoms of dementia can assume advice
giving and teaching roles despite their cognitive impairments. The
researchers conducted a pair of first-of-their-kind studies, and the
findings were published in the academic journal The Gerontologist.
"A relatively common perception of adults with
dementia in nursing homes is that they are helpless and incompetent and
do not have the potential to maintain a certain level of independence
and ability to communicate," Dijkstra said.
"Our studies show that they have abilities that
their caregivers and family members may not even be aware of. Giving
those with dementia opportunities to give advice or teach others could
help break the cycle of learned helplessness and improve self-esteem and
well-being."
In the first study, the researchers interviewed 14
people with early to advanced stages of dementia at an adult day care
center. The mean age of the participants was 82. The researchers asked
about marriage, children and church in a purely social way, such as
"Tell me about your children." In later conversations, they asked the
adults for advice on the same topics, as in, "I'm thinking about having
children. What kind of advice can you give me on that?"
They found that adults were more coherent,
informative and focused on the topic when asked for advice as opposed to
when they were simply asked about their children, church or marriage.
"Participants took their roles quite seriously when
experimenters asked them for advice," the researchers wrote. "They were
eager to dispense useful information, which suggests that there may be
social benefits to their information-giving role assignment. Moreover,
asking for advice may have contributed to conversations that were more
to the point than those seen in the social conversation situation."
The researchers also conducted a second study to
explore whether adults with dementia had retained the ability to serve
in a teaching role.
For this study, six adults with dementia and six
without dementia, all in their 70s or 80s, were given a booklet of
pictures to guide them in teaching someone a simple recipe, such as how
to make banana pudding or decorate a gingerbread man. Both the
cognitively intact older adults and those with dementia successfully
taught students to prepare the recipes.
Dijkstra said she was surprised that there was so
little difference in the teaching abilities of the healthy adults and
those with dementia, although she noted that those with dementia needed
more prompting than the others to finish the task.
The researchers theorized that adults with dementia
were successful giving advice and teaching a cooking lesson because they
were able to tap into knowledge that was accumulated when they were
younger and needed these skills as parents or mentors. This type of
knowledge does not decline as much as memory of recent events, she said.
"The fact that another person needs information
from them also places adults with dementia in a position of empowerment,
which makes them more motivated and possibly more goal oriented to
finish such a task," she said.
Caregivers and family members may want to try
seeking advice from elders or encouraging them to take a leadership role
in certain activities, Dijkstra said.
"This will put the focus on what they are still
able to do instead of what they are no longer able to do," she said.
"Awareness of these preserved abilities may also make it easier for
family members to deal with the situation of 'losing' their family
member to dementia or Alzheimer's disease."
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