Abstract
Social interaction might prevent or delay dementia, but little is known about the specific effects of various social activity interventions on cognition. This study conducted a single-site randomized controlled trial (RCT) of Photo-Integrated Conversation Moderated by Robots (PICMOR), a group conversation intervention program for resilience against cognitive decline and dementia. In the RCT, PICMOR was compared to an unstructured group conversation condition. Sixty-five community-living older adults participated in this study. The intervention was provided once a week for 12 weeks. Primary outcome measures were the cognitive functions; process outcome measures included the linguistic characteristics of speech to estimate interaction quality. Baseline and post-intervention data were collected. PICMOR contains two key features: 1) photos taken by the participants are displayed and discussed sequentially; and 2) a robotic moderator manages turn-taking to make sure that participants are allocated the same amount of time. Among the primary outcome measures, one of the subcategories of cognitive functions, verbal fluency significantly improved in the intervention group. Among the process outcome measures, a part of the subcategories of linguistic characteristics of speech, the amount of speech and richness of words, proportion of providing topics, questions, and answers in total utterances were larger for the intervention group. This study demonstrated for the first time the positive effects of a robotic social activity intervention on cognitive function in healthy older adults via RCT. The group conversation generated by PICMOR may improve participants’ verbal fluency since participants have more opportunity to provide their own topics, asking and answering questions which results in exploring larger vocabularies. PICMOR is available and accessible to community-living older adults. Clinical Trial Registration: UMIN Clinical Trials Registry, identifier UMIN000036667.
Highlights
Cognitive health is a key component of healthy aging
We propose Photo-Integrated Conversation Moderated by Robots, which contains two key technologies: 1) a group conversation support method called Coimagination (Otake et al, 2011; Otake-Matsuura, 2018), in which each participant is allocated an equal amount of time for talking, listening, and question and answer time, and prepares topics and takes photos beforehand according to sessional themes; and 2) a robot that measures each participant’s speech and supports turn-taking on that basis during the discussion phase of the intervention (Yamaguchi et al, 2012)
While effective interventions that improve cognitive health in aging populations are increasingly necessary (World Health Organization, 2019), evidence regarding the impact of social activity interventions on cognitive functioning remains limited
Summary
Cognitive health is a key component of healthy aging. Interventions for risk factors may delay or prevent a third of dementia cases (Livingston et al, 2017). Determining the effectiveness of social activity intervention on cognitive health is necessary. Among the social activity interventions that exist, group-based conversation is the type that is expected to affect cognitive function in particular. Group conversation interventions’ effects on the cognitive functions of healthy older adults are unclear. Cognitive changes in older adults are highly variable from person to person, which may lead to diversity in the level and manner of participation in a group conversation and of outcomes. No study so far has measured the manner of participation in a group conversation, what conditions regulate it, or its differential effects on cognition in healthy older adults
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