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Dementia Support
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Memory – Applying Memory Research
In this course, Dr Ashok Jansari (Goldsmiths, University of London) explores the application of memory psychology research to the real world. In the first lecture, we think about how memory research findings can be applied to assist in the support of dementia patients and their families. In the second lecture, we think about how memory research findings can be applied to the support and treatment of individuals with mental health difficulties. Next, we think about how memory research findings can be applied to improve the reliability and usefulness of eye witness testimonies. In the fourth and final lecture, we think about how memory research findings can be applied to understanding and overcoming drug addictions.
Dementia Support
In this lecture, we think about how memory research findings can improve the support for people with dementia, focusing in particular on: (i) the commonality between all forms of dementia being that they are degenerative, with Alzheimer’s being the most commonly recognised; (ii) the non-pharmacological nature of current dementia treatments; (iii) levels of processing theory, which found that more effort put into learning results in more effective remembering of that learned information; (iv) research into effortful learning which has shown to be effective at improving the memory abilities of dementia patients; (v) spaced retrieval, which involves providing the answer alongside a question, but gradually increasing the time between each presentation of the question, to solidify the memory; (vi) research into remembering in groups, finding that social remembering elicited better memory performance; (vii) Dr Jansari’s own work on a dementia diagnosis test which can detect dementia symptoms earlier than is currently possible, giving families opportunity to prepare and implement support.
Hello, I'm Dr Al Sharpton. Sorry.
00:00:06And I'm a senior lecturer in cognitive
00:00:08neuropsychology at Goldsmiths University of London.
00:00:11In this lecture,
00:00:14I'm going to be telling you about how we can use our
00:00:15understanding of memory to try to help people with memory loss.
00:00:18The society at the moment is experiencing a major
00:00:23problem because of the rise in diagnosis of dementia.
00:00:26Dementia is actually a family of disorders,
00:00:31and generally the main commonality between them is that they're degenerative,
00:00:35and that means that they're attacking the brain. And it's getting worse over time.
00:00:41And so slowly, more and more of the brain is being affected.
00:00:47There's a number of different dementia, as the best known one is Alzheimer's.
00:00:52But there's also a frontal temporal dementia, semantic dementia
00:00:56and Lewy body dementia, for example.
00:01:01Now, at the moment we have, we don't understand what's causing the dementia,
00:01:05and therefore we can't cure them or stop them.
00:01:10So we're in a situation where, because of better health care,
00:01:14more people are living to older ages.
00:01:18But we're seeing a huge rise in dementia diagnoses
00:01:21and also the cost to individuals to families and society is increasing.
00:01:26So since we can't stop dementia or curate. What can we do to try to help people?
00:01:34Dementia.
00:01:40So the attempts that are being made
00:01:41at the moment are basically non pharmacological,
00:01:44because we can't treat dementia in the way that
00:01:47we might be able to treat viruses et cetera.
00:01:50Because of the fact that memory is an area that's been worked on for many years.
00:01:55Over the years, we've developed a good understanding of what can help memory,
00:01:59even in people with that brain damage or dementia.
00:02:07And therefore, over the years,
00:02:11researchers have been applying this knowledge to try
00:02:13to develop ways to help people with dementia.
00:02:17A standard, uh,
00:02:21type of tasks that can be used and has been used
00:02:23with people of dementia is called effort for Learning Now.
00:02:26Effort for learning is a way to try
00:02:33to get the person's cognitive or mental strategies going
00:02:35because the dementia might be reducing their mental strategies,
00:02:41and therefore this effort for learning is a way to bring that back up again.
00:02:46Maybe in some of your courses,
00:02:53you might have come across levels of processing and levels
00:02:56of processing was a wonderful finding in the 19 seventies
00:02:59that the more effort you put into trying to learn something,
00:03:04the more likely you are to remember it.
00:03:09So if you just skim read something without trying to understand it,
00:03:11you might remember some of the words, but you won't understand the content.
00:03:14But if you put more effort into understanding the actual meaning,
00:03:18you're more likely to remember it later on.
00:03:23And what's been found
00:03:26is that by using
00:03:27effortful learning
00:03:30techniques for people with dementia,
00:03:32researchers are actually managing to get some people with dementia
00:03:35to remember things that ordinarily they would forget quite quickly.
00:03:40So that's one example.
00:03:44Another example is a technique called spaced retrieval.
00:03:47Space retrieval is a clever technique where you teach people something.
00:03:52So you might say, uh, what is the capital of Albania?
00:03:58And the couple of Albania is Tirana. Now the person doesn't know this.
00:04:05You give them the question and the answer at the same time.
00:04:10The next
00:04:14you give them the question,
00:04:15and if they can't remember the answer, you give them the answer again.
00:04:18So each time you're giving them the answer. If they can't remember it,
00:04:22and slowly they'll be able to remember it.
00:04:26But then you space out the times that you asked them. You might do it after 10 minutes,
00:04:29then after half an hour, then after a few hours, then another day.
00:04:37And what they found is that by using the space retrieval where first of all,
00:04:42they teach the information in a solid block,
00:04:47and then they space out the memory retrievals.
00:04:52They are actually finding that people are dementia,
00:04:57are able to actually learn some things.
00:05:00And this is useful because if someone's memories fading,
00:05:03they might need to remember the names of the nurses, the doctors,
00:05:07the things they need to do, etcetera, etcetera.
00:05:12So the space retrieval technique is being used to try to help people
00:05:15with dementia to learn some of the things that they might need to,
00:05:20um, either at home or in a care centre for the elderly.
00:05:24The next area, which is rather interesting,
00:05:30is
00:05:33the effect of
00:05:34us being a social species.
00:05:36Now this comes actually from social psychology rather than cognitive psychology,
00:05:39and it's to do with the fact that we all have a social identity.
00:05:44I don't exist just by myself. I exist because I'm part of a family.
00:05:48I'm part of a group of friends I'm, uh, part of my faculty at work,
00:05:55and these are all my social identities
00:06:01now.
00:06:04The reason that this is important is that remembering is actually a social event.
00:06:05If I'm speaking to you and telling you about my last
00:06:13holiday or asking you about your last birthday party were together
00:06:16and it's a social activity, I don't remember things just for myself.
00:06:22I remember things so that I can connect with you and speak with you. Researchers
00:06:27did a study in a day to day care centre where
00:06:32they got people in the centre to reminisce about old memories.
00:06:37But they did it in two different ways.
00:06:44Some of the people did it individually, so they've just found their their own
00:06:47and had to remember things about when they were younger,
00:06:52their wedding etcetera on their own.
00:06:56Other people were put into groups
00:06:59and they could talk about their memories,
00:07:02and they were called the Social Remembering Group.
00:07:05And what they found is that the
00:07:08social remembering people actually remembered more things
00:07:11than the people who remembered on their own.
00:07:15So what that demonstrates is that we can
00:07:17use our understanding that memory plays this social function
00:07:20to try to use that to help people who are forgetting things
00:07:26to improve their memory
00:07:32and their recall of their personal lives by doing it in a social setting
00:07:34so slowly we're bringing together little element
00:07:39of what we are learning about memory,
00:07:44using things like effort for learning, the space retrieval,
00:07:47the social element of learning to try to slowly improve some of
00:07:51the things that we can do for people whose memory is becoming compromised
00:07:57and in my own work.
00:08:03One of the things we're doing is that we've developed a test where we
00:08:04think that we might be able to diagnose dementia earlier than is currently possible
00:08:09This is quite important because at the moment,
00:08:15often people get a diagnosis of dementia on most when it's
00:08:17become so obvious that you don't actually need the diagnosis.
00:08:22And at that point it becomes difficult for the family to help them, even clinicians,
00:08:27to help them much.
00:08:33And unfortunately,
00:08:34a lot of people end up in daycare in in residential homes and things like that.
00:08:35So if we can diagnose the dementia a few years earlier,
00:08:40three years earlier or five years earlier,
00:08:46we can actually put in place mechanisms to support people's memory
00:08:48may be using the techniques that I've just been talking about,
00:08:54and we can get the family ready for the unfortunate thing that will happen.
00:08:57But at least they can have something to work with for the next five years,
00:09:02rather than suddenly finding out that their
00:09:07loved one who's got dementia and that within
00:09:11a year they're probably going to have to go to an old people's home.
00:09:13So what we have here is that because we can't cure dementia
00:09:18and we can't stop it from happening,
00:09:26what we can at least do is to try to find ways of helping those people who already have
00:09:28it using memory techniques that we've developed or in
00:09:33the work that I'm doing to diagnose even earlier,
00:09:37because then you're finding it before it got really bad.
00:09:41And maybe clinicians can help these people to hold onto their memories better.
00:09:45So this demonstrates how psychology uses the theoretical
00:09:51information that you'll be learning through your course.
00:09:57But that theoretical information to create models, etcetera, etcetera,
00:10:00is actually for, uh, real benefit for other people in the future,
00:10:04and we can use it for society
00:10:11in the next lecture.
00:10:15I'm going to be telling you about how we can
00:10:16use psychological knowledge for helping people with mental health difficulties.
00:10:18
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Jansari, A. (2022, October 17). Memory – Applying Memory Research - Dementia Support [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/memory-applying-memory-research/dementia-support
MLA style
Jansari, A. "Memory – Applying Memory Research – Dementia Support." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 17 Oct 2022, https://massolit.io/courses/memory-applying-memory-research/dementia-support