Engaging Older Adults with Dementia in Creative Occupations Using Artificially Intelligent Assistive Technology

Abstract

Engagement in creative occupations has been shown to promote well-being for older adults with dementia. Providing access to such occupations is often difficult, as successful participation requires face-time with a person who is knowledgeable in facilitating engagement as well as access to any required resources, such as an arts studio. In response, a computer-based device, the Engaging Platform for Art Development (ePAD), was created to with the aim of enabling more independent access to art creation, ePAD is a an artificially intelligent touch-screen device that estimates a client's level of engagement and provides prompts to encourage engagement if the client becomes disengaged. ePAD is customizable such that an art therapist can choose themes and tools that they feel reflect their client's needs and preferences. This article presents a mixed-methods study that evaluated ePAD's usability by six older adult (with mild-to-moderate dementia) and art therapist dyads. Usability measures suggest that all participants found ePAD engaging but did not find prompts effective. Future development of ePAD includes improving the prompts, implementing the recommendations made by participants in this research, and long-term testing in more naturalistic art therapy contexts.

Studies Involving People With Dementia and Touchscreen Technology: A Literature Review

“…Several of the aforementioned articles have featured games or leisure activities; however, these have been designed to assess cognition [21,26], provide cognitive stimulation [37,45], or to assist in the delivery of therapeutic interventions [40,41]. Very few studies focused on games or activities purely for entertainment or leisure purposes.…”

“…Programs and apps presented on touchscreen devices can be designed to facilitate customization, which allows for easy adaptation and consequently they can be responsive to the needs of the users [13,25,37,40,41]. Presenting customization options within programs in an accessible format allows a caregiver or therapist to tailor the program to each individual [40,41].…”

Process evaluations in neurological rehabilitation: a mixed-evidence systematic review and recommendations for future research

“…Leuty et al 44 Linking trial outcomes to process evaluation findings Only 24 studies (21 interventions) reported the use of a theoretical framework or a research framework to inform the decision-making and design of the process evaluation. As a result, reasoning behind used approaches and methodologies was rarely described.…”

Technology and Dementia: The Future is Now

“…Musical memory is relatively spared in dementia [39] and multiple technology projects have leveraged this including the one-button radio [40], simple music-making interface [41] and collaborative music making [42]. Enjoying art has also led to programmes such as House of Memories 1 , an interactive art installation for care homes [43], making art as an enjoyable pastime [44] and a more focused art therapy programme [45, 46]. …”