Verbal or visual cues: impacts of familiarity and attention

Abstract

In hope to reduce the institutionalization of the people suffering of Alzheimer's disease, to promote their autonomy and to facilitate their daily activities, assistive technologies are in development. Recent studies with Alzheimer's patients suggest that this type of technology, using verbal cues, can help them to complete more steps in the accomplishment of a task by themselves [2]. A recent review of literature on the assistance technology to help people in daily activities revealed a massive use of the verbal cues [3]. However, the verbal cues can be less adapted and efficient for people suffering Alzheimer's disease if their verbal episodic memory is affected. Only few authors compared the verbal cue with other type of cues for people suffering Alzheimer's disease. However, those authors demonstrated a slight difference in favor of video cues [1-8]. In an effort to contribute solving this important issue, we tried to test the efficacy of different type of effectors (verbal or video cues) in realizing a task considered to be an activity of daily life, with people suffering Alzheimer's disease.