Recovering memory: Sense-making and recall strategies of individuals with mild cognitive impairment

Abstract

Cognitive impairment as it relates to making sense of information, or to communicating information needs, can range from mild disorientation and aphasia, to a complete loss of short-term memory and use of language. While studies on semantic dementia (SD), for example, are evident in a range of health science disciplines, and social work, little research – particularly within the information science discipline – on categorization or classification strategies for sense-making and recall among those with SD or related cognitive impairments, has been identified. This poster reports on a pilot study exploring “sorting” strategies for recalling everyday life experiences, and the effectiveness of multi-modal tokens as context for association and reconstruction of participant scenarios. Preliminary to a larger study, participants diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer/Dementia (AD) responded to questions concerning personal everyday life events. After a delay of several weeks, they were asked to describe what they associated with representative non-verbal tokens or cues. Recollections were compared with original scenarios to determine (1) whether and how the multi-modal cues provided access to the initial recall of the everyday life event, (2) what additional scenarios, if any, were evoked, and (3) what associative links revealed, subsequently, about sense-making and sorting strategies around memory recall. Understanding how these strategies assist with reconstructing episodic and semantic memories could inform the design of life history retrieval systems for reinforcing or recovering intact memory.