A Virtual Interaction Training Guide as a Quality of Life Intervention

This project seeks to use new computer technology to reduce distress among persons with Alzheimer’s disease by improving the interactions they have with professional care providers. People with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may forget details of their lives, which makes it difficult for them to interact with people in new situations. Our research has discovered, however, that those who have lost cognitive memory retain affective (emotional) memory; despite not remembering details about their lives, they still feel like themselves, and continue to act and react on that basis. The resident’s affective memory is built out of a rich history of experiences and interactions with others important to them. Residential care staff may not be familiar with that personal history, especially with new residents, and residents may lack the ability to communicate the needed information. According sociological theories of behavior, interacting with a resident in a way that conflicts with his or her self-perception (e.g., treating a former military officer as a patient) is likely to create confusion, frustration and dismay and may spark agitation or outbursts. Repeated unsuccessful interactions may even wear down the resident’s stamina, leaving him or her apathetic or depressed. Such reactions often result in the use of psychotropic medication to relieve the resident’s distress.

 

This project will design a virtual interaction guide that trains care providers to interact with persons with Alzheimer’s based on that person’s affective, rather than cognitive memory. Researchers will interview persons with AD living in a long term residential care facility and their family caregivers to collect patients’ personal histories. Based on this information, researchers will formulate an “affective profile” for each person with AD, and program that profile into the virtual interaction tool. The virtual interaction tool will then use that profile to simulate affectively-intelligent social interactions. The guide will model for care providers how to best interact with each resident to reinforce that person’s affective memory. In other words, care providers will be able to tailor their interaction to each unique resident in ways that do not produce negative emotions. While many experienced staff already do this intuitively, the simulation program has the potential to reduce the need for trial and error methods of learning to work with new residents as well as expedite the integration of new staff. Our study will implement this virtual interaction guide as a training program for staff and evaluate its effects on staff-resident interaction in a high quality residential facility. If successful, this new technology has the potential to significantly reduce reliance on psychotropic medication and improve the well-being of people with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias in residential care.