![]() ![]() It was found by one study to be the most popularly attended social activity at 50 surveyed senior citizen centers and institutions, representing nearly 7,000 active seniors ( McNeilly & Burke, 2001). In the present study, we chose the game of bingo to investigate the possibility of an ESPI to enhance search performance.īingo is a leisure activity that is widely enjoyed and is available for play by adults in the community, in institutions, and online. Searching for objects is a necessary daily function, and the inability to quickly find sought-for items is a source of frustration for healthy adults and for those with vision-compromising disorders such as AD and PD. We were interested in whether a visual enhancement intervention could compensate for suboptimal visual abilities on a complex visual search task. We define ESPI as interventions based on external support, meaning changes to the external environment of the individual. We refer to this class of interventions as Externally Supported Performance Interventions (ESPI), one end of a continuum of methods to enhance cognition, daily function, and independence in older adults or populations with sensory-cognitive disabilities. For example, we have shown that the speed of letter identification by AD, PD and healthy older adults can be significantly improved by enhancement of stimulus contrast ( Amick, Cronin-Golomb & Gilmore, 2003 Cronin-Golomb et al., 2007 Gilmore, Cronin-Golomb, Neargarder & Morrison, 2005 Gilmore, Thomas, Klitz, Persanyi & Tomsak, 1996).Įxternal supports such as visual enhancement interventions may improve cognitive task performance regardless of an individual’s ability to counteract cognitive deficits through self-generated strategies. A positive converse of this relation between vision and cognition is that visually-based interventions may enhance cognitive performance. Reduced stimulus signal strength has been shown to interact with sensory and perceptual deficits, impairing cognition in these groups ( Clay et al., 2009 Cronin-Golomb, 1995 & 2004 Cronin-Golomb, Corkin & Growdon, 1995 Cronin-Golomb, Gilmore, Neargarder, Morrison, & Laudate, 2007 Gilmore, Spinks, & Thomas, 2006 Mapstone, Steffenella, & Duffy, 2003 Mendez, Tomsak, & Remler, 1990 Rizzo, Anderson, Dawson, Myers, & Ball, 2000). ![]() Visual perceptual functioning is reduced to varying degrees in normal aging and in individuals with the age-related neurodegenerative disorders of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), and may be related to cognitive difficulties. The general finding of improved performance across healthy and afflicted groups suggests the value of visual support as an easy-to-apply intervention to enhance cognitive performance. AD also obtained benefit from increasing contrast, presumably by compensating for their contrast sensitivity deficit. Performance improvement through increased stimulus size and decreased complexity was demonstrated by all groups. The externally-supported performance interventions of increased stimulus size and decreased complexity resulted in improvements in performance by all groups. We varied stimulus contrast, size, and visual complexity during game play. Participants were 19 younger adults, 14 individuals with probable Alzheimer’s disease (AD), 13 AD-matched healthy adults, 17 non-demented individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD), and 20 PD-matched healthy adults. We investigated if performance of a complex, familiar visual search task (the game of bingo) could be enhanced in groups with suboptimal vision by providing external support through manipulation of task stimuli. External support may improve task performance regardless of an individual’s ability to compensate for cognitive deficits through internally-generated mechanisms. ![]()
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