A-107 Evaluating the Quality of Real-World Compensatory Strategy Use in Community-Dwelling Older Adults

Abstract

Abstract Objective: Older adults often spontaneously engage in compensatory strategies (CS) to support completion of everyday tasks. However, factors that influence the success of chosen strategies remain unclear. The present study aimed to examine if evaluation of the overall quality of compensatory strategies, as compared to a count of strategies, better predicts completion of real-world prospective memory (PM) tasks. Method: Seventy community-dwelling older adults (M = 70.80, SD = 7.87) completed two testing sessions remotely from their own homes through video conferencing. Participants were presented four novel real-world PM tasks designed to be carried out independently in the future. Upon task presentation, participants were given time to plan and encouraged to use their typical CS. The examiner captured detailed information about CS planned at task presentation and strategies utilized at follow-up testing, as well as PM task accuracy. In addition to a count of CS, participants’ CS were assigned a quality score upon video review. Results: Hierarchical regression revealed that Compensatory Strategy Quality (CSQ) score provides incremental validity in predicting PM task accuracy over and above CS count, global cognition, and age (ΔR2 = 0.24, ΔF = 29.36, p < 0.001). CSQ uniquely accounted for 24.01% of the variance in PM task accuracy (sr = 0.49, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Evaluating quality of cognitive CS provides enhanced precision in predicting PM. Findings of this study may provide researchers with tools to study compensation in a more nuanced manner. Furthermore, findings have the potential to be translated into clinical interventions, such as targeted compensatory strategy trainings.