Evaluating a Low-Cost Technology to Enable People with Intellectual Disability or Psychiatric Disorders to Initiate and Perform Functional Daily Activities.

Emanuela Resta,Lucia Brunone,Fiora D’Amico,Lorenzo Desideri

doi:10.3390/ijerph18189659

Abstract

People with intellectual disability or psychiatric disorders and cognitive dysfunctions may need assistive technology to maintain and improve their levels of functioning and independence. This study assessed a smartphone-based system to remind the user to initiate functional daily activities (e.g., setting a table for lunch) and perform them without the support of a caregiver. The system was evaluated through a non-concurrent multiple baseline design across two groups of participants. During the intervention sessions, the participants were provided with a system involving a Samsung Galaxy A3 smartphone fitted with the Easy Alarm YouTube application and audio files. The alarm served to remind the participant to carry out a planned activity. Following the reminder, the smartphone presented each of the step instructions preset for the activity. The data showed a statistically significant increase in the number of activities initiated independently from baseline to intervention for all participants. All participants also showed a significant increase in the number of activity steps correctly performed when supported by the smartphone. These results suggest that a low-cost system (i.e., smartphone) can be used to improve independence of people with intellectual disability or psychiatric disorders with cognitive dysfunctions.

Highlights

Published: 14 September 2021People with intellectual disability or psychiatric conditions and cognitive dysfunctions may have serious difficulties in managing functional daily activities [1,2,3,4]
One could see the technology being employed for a variety of activities spread over the day so as to provide a practically relevant support to the participants’ initiative and engagement. In light of these considerations, the present exploratory study was aimed at answering the following research question: can adults diagnosed with mild to moderate intellectual disability or psychiatric disorders with cognitive dysfunctions use a commercially available smartphone to independently initiate and perform functional daily activities? To answer this question, we provided 14 adults with a smartphone that alerted them as to the time when any particular activity scheduled for the day was to be started and provided with the verbal instructions for the single steps of that activity
The results extend previous evidence [19] and confirm that a simple and affordable mobile device can be programmed by caregivers and used by people with either intellectual disability or psychiatric disorders to achieve independence in activities of daily life

Summary

Introduction

People with intellectual disability or psychiatric conditions and cognitive dysfunctions may have serious difficulties in managing functional daily activities [1,2,3,4] They may fail to start the activities independently and wait for reminders from staff or caregivers, or may fail to start them at the appropriate time. Large consensus exists on the need to address such situation by helping the people to reduce their level of dependence and develop a more active and functional role within their daily context [9,10,11] Efforts in this direction have been increasingly based on the use of lowcost (affordable) commercially available mainstream technology devices, such as tablets and smartphones [12,13,14]. Compared to traditional assistive technologies developed for people with disabilities, mainstream mobile technology devices

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