INTRODUCTION

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, accounting for 60 to 80 percent of all cases (Alzheimer’s Association , 2016). Alzheimer’s disease patients experience gradual disturbance in several cognitive functions such as language, reasoning, memory, and visuospatial skills. Visuospatial skills refer to our ability to process and interpret visual and spatial information in our environment. These skills enable us to complete essential everyday tasks such as reading a map, driving a car, giving directions, recognizing and manipulating shapes and object. Deficits in visuospatial performance can be detected in the very mildest stage of clinically diagnosed Alzheimer patients (Storandt, 1995). Visuospatial dysfunction in Alzheimer disease is reflected in perceptual impairments as well as in deficits in higher order aspects of spatial orientation (Alice, 2014).

• An experiment conducted in 2012 found that visuospatial training through video games can not only impact performance on measures of spatial functioning, but can also affect performance in content areas in which these abilities are utilized (Sanchez, 2012).
• In 2014 Erin Connors, Elizabeth Chrastil, Jamie Sánchez, & Merabet Lotfi conducted an experiment that ultimately concluded that a game based learning approach can facilitate the transfer of spatial knowledge and further, can be used by individuals who are blind for the purposes of navigation in real-world environments (Connors, Chrastil, Sánchez, & Merabet, 2014).

OBJECTIVE

Whiles there has been many research conducted exploring whether video games can improve visuospatial skills, there has been only a few resent studies that has directly investigated whether games can enhance visuospatial skills in individuals with Alzheimer’s. To explore this topic this research, would take a different approach and focus on table top games.

• This study would explore whether table games can improve the visuospatial skills of individuals with Alzheimer’s.
• The current study aims to test this notion by assessing the visuospatial skill of individuals with Alzheimer’s in an experimental setting.
• I predict that table game usage can improve the visuospatial skill of men and women with Alzheimer disease

METHODS

Subjects

African American, Hispanics and Caucasian individuals between the age of 60 to 70 with Alzheimer’s disease is the population of interest in this study. Individuals with any other types of dementia or any other neurological brain disorder were excluded from this study.

• Participants for this study were recruited by ads placed in nursing homes, retirement homes, hospitals and counseling centers. Participants were offered compensation for their involvement in this study.
• Individuals who responded to the Ads and met the specific criteria were randomly assigned into three groups. In group one individuals were given the easy PINGO cards to play. In group two individuals were given the medium PINGO cards to play. In group three individuals were given the hard PINGO card to play. After the completion of the games participants were asked to complete a measures of visuospatial abilities, the paper folding test.

Procedure and Apparatus

•  For this study, PINGO a game focused on visuospatial skills were created. The game created focused on an individual’s ability to identify rotated representation of three dimensional objects. The materials included in this game are easy, medium and hard playing cards, chips, and image cards. The image cards consist of pictures of three dimensional non rotated objects. The playing cards each consist of 20 images. The images presented on the playing cards are rotated representation of the ones displayed in the image cards. Individuals who identified five rotated images vertically, horizontally, or diagonally wins the game.
• The instructions for each of the three different groups were verbally presented to its participants at the beginning of the experiment. All games were conducted in separate room and were administered by investigators and played in private and separate rooms. The games were played three times with15 minute intervals after each completion. Once the games were finish individuals were escorted into a different room to complete the paper folding test. The results from the paper folding test would be manually collected and analyze.

RESULTS

• The results showed that individuals in the hard playing card group were significantly more accurate than in the easy plaguing card group (p= .003).
• The results showed that individuals in the hard playing card were not significantly more accurate than in the medium playing card group (p= 0.124).
• The results showed that individuals in the medium playing card were not significantly more accurate than in the easy playing card group (p= 0.196).

CONCLUSION

• It is predict that table top game usage can improve the visuospatial skill of men and women with Alzheimer disease.
• The results from this experiment offers a solution to the visuospatial impairment found in previous research.
• The results showed that individual’s visuospatial skill improved with usage of a table top game.
• This study bridge the gap in research involving the use of table top games as a learning tool for visuospatial skills.
• Previous experiments conducted found that visuospatial training through video games can impact performance on measures of spatial functioning in individuals with visuospatial impairment (Sanchez, 2012; Connors, Chrastil, Sánchez, & Merabet, 2014). Similar to these experiments this study found that visuospatial training through a table top game can impact performance on measures of spatial functioning in a group of individuals with visuospatial impairment such as, individuals with Alzheimer’s disease.
• The small size is one potential problem of this study because the results from this study may not be generalize. Another potential problem with this study is that the participants included were volunteers, this can led to a potential bias.
• Future experiments can included a larger and more random sample, which will control for the potential confounds included in this study. In addition, longer playing time and different measure of visuospatial skills can be included in future studies.

REFERENCES

• Alzheimer’s Association. (2016). What Is Alzheimer’s. Retrieved from Alzheimer’s Association: http://www.alz.org
• Feng, J., Spence, I., & Pratt, J. (2007). Playing an action video game reduces gender differences in spatial cognition. Psychological    Science, 18(10), 850-855. Doi:10.1111/j.1467
• Kaskie, B., & Storandt, M. (1995). Visuospatial deficit in dementia of the Alzheimer type.              Archives of Neurology, 52(4), 422-425.Doi:10.1001/archneur.1995.00540280120025
• Sanchez, C. A. (2012). Enhancing visuospatial performance through video game training to increase learning in visuospatial science domains.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(1), 58-65. Doi:10.3758/s13423-011-0177-7
• Frédérick Imbeault, B. B. (2011). Serious games in cognitive training for Alzheimer’s patients. Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH),2011 IEEE 1st International Conference on, 1-8.
• Connors, E. C., Chrastil, E. R., Sánchez, J., & Merabet, L. B. (2014). Action video game play and transfer of navigation and spatial cognition       skills in adolescents who are blind. Frontiers in   Human Neuroscience, 8.Doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00133 

Final Poster