Give Me a Sign: Concrete Symbols Facilitate Orientation in Alzheimer’s Disease Dementia

Sebastian Boedeker, Martin Driessen, Philipp Schulz, Thomas Beblo, Stefan Kreisel and Max Toepper

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2023, vol. 78, issue 8, 1269-1277

Abstract: ObjectivesPersons with Alzheimer’s disease dementia (ADD) often show impaired orientation, particularly in unknown environments. Signs may offer an opportunity to compensate for these deficits and thus improve participation.MethodsWe assessed 30 persons with ADD and 36 healthy controls by using a sign comprehension paradigm (SCP) in a real-life environment. Nonparametric mixed model analyses of variance were used to analyze the effect of different symbols and additional scripture (coding condition) on SCP performance speed and accuracy.ResultsAnalyses revealed a significant main effect of symbol design on SCP speed as well as an interaction effect of group × symbol, indicating a benefit of concrete, optimized signs for persons with ADD. Furthermore, analyses of SCP error rates revealed the main effects of group and coding condition as well as an interaction effect of group × coding. Persons with ADD made more errors than healthy controls, but SCP error rates decreased significantly in ADD in the double-coding condition.DiscussionOur findings revealed an advantage of concrete double-coded symbols over conventional symbols and therefore strongly suggest the implementation of concrete double-coded signs to support older people living with ADD.

Keywords: Cognitive reserve; Dementia; Geriatric patients; Neuropsychology; Symbol comprehension (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbad041 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:78:y:2023:i:8:p:1269-1277.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().