The advantages of using naturalistic virtual reality (VR) environments based on everyday life tasks for cognitive intervention in the elderly are not yet well understood. The literature suggests that ...the similarity of such exercises with real life activities may improve generalizability by extending the transfer of gains of training to everyday living. This study aimed to investigate the gains associated with this ecologically-oriented virtual reality cognitive stimulation (VR-CS) versus standard cognitive stimulation in the elderly. Forty-three healthy older adults were divided into two groups: an experimental group underwent a VR-based cognitive stimulation and an active control group underwent a paper-and-pencil cognitive stimulation. The outcomes assessed at the pre-treatment and posttreatment assessment consisted in well-established tests for cognitive and executive functioning, depression, subjective well-being, and functionality. The results showed positive outcomes on dimensions of general cognition, executive functioning, attention, and visual memory in the group that underwent VR-CS. Improvements in executive functioning in this group was supported by consistent evidence of increases in attention abilities but little evidence of increases in memory abilities. Both effects may have contributed to improvements in general cognition. Further studies are needed to test whether these effects may extend to well-being and functionality in cognitively impaired older adults.
Negative and repetitive self-oriented thinking (rumination) is associated with lower well-being and health. The social context of rumination remains underexplored and mostly centers on marital ...relationships. To embrace the diversity of older adult relationships, this study includes a range of different relationships (e.g., spouses, siblings, friends, etc.) and examines the role of rumination by close others on individual well-being during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.
Using daily diary data from 140 Canadian older adults (M = 72.21 years, standard deviation SD = 5.39, range: 63-87 years, 47% women, 71% university educated) and a close other of their choice (M = 59.95 years, SD = 16.54, range: 18-83 years, 78% women, 81% university educated), this project builds on past research examining daily life rumination dynamics from a dyadic perspective. For 10 days, both dyad members reported their daily rumination and affect quality in the evening.
Multilevel models replicate past work showing that individual rumination was associated with higher negative affect (within-person: b = 0.27, p < .001, between-person: b = 0.57, p < .001) and lower positive affect (within-person: b = -0.18, p < .001, between-person: b = -0.29, p < .001). Importantly, we additionally observed that partner rumination was associated with higher negative affect (b = 0.03, p = .038) and lower positive affect (b = -0.04, p = .023), highlighting the social context of rumination.
Findings illustrate the significance of rumination for the self and others and underline the merit of taking a dyadic perspective on what is typically viewed as an individual-level phenomenon.
The ability to identify and accurately predict abnormal behavior is important for health monitoring systems in smart environments. Specifically, for elderly persons wishing to maintain their ...independence and comfort in their living spaces, abnormal behaviors observed during activities of daily living are a good indicator that the person is more likely to have health and behavioral problems that need intervention and assistance. In this paper, we investigate a variety of deep learning models such as Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), CNN-LSTM and Autoencoder-CNN-LSTM for identifying and accurately predicting the abnormal behaviors of elderly people. The temporal information and spatial sequences collected over time are used to generate models, which can be fitted to the training data and the fitted model can be used to make a prediction. We present an experimental evaluation of these models performance in identifying and predicting elderly persons abnormal behaviors in smart homes, via extensive testing on two public data sets, taking into account different models architectures and tuning the hyperparameters for each model. The performance evaluation is focused on accuracy measure.
The ability to regulate emotions is central to well-being, but healthy emotion regulation may not merely be about using the "right" strategies. According to the strategy-situation-fit hypothesis, ...emotion-regulation strategies are conducive to well-being only when used in appropriate contexts. This study is the first to test the strategy-situation-fit hypothesis using ecological momentary assessment of cognitive reappraisal—a putatively adaptive strategy. We expected people who used reappraisal more in uncontrollable situations and less in controllable situations to have greater well-being than people with the opposite pattern of reappraisal use. Healthy participants (n = 74) completed measures of wellbeing in the lab and used a smartphone app to report their use of reappraisal and perceived controllability of their environment 10 times a day for 1 week. Results supported the strategy-situation-fit hypothesis. Participants with relatively high well-being used reappraisal more in situations they perceived as lower in controllability and less in situations they perceived as higher in controllability. In contrast, we found little evidence for an association between greater well-being and greater mean use of reappraisal across situations.
Much disagreement exists surrounding the relationship between digital communication and adolescent well-being. Micro-level insight into the direct effect of online interaction on affective ...experiences in daily life is crucial to advancing this discussion. In this registered study, we used experience sampling in 1705 general-population adolescents (n = 43.226 total observations) to examine different emotional and social experiences, at the moment they engage in online and face-to-face social interactions. Adolescents reported significantly less positive affect when alone compared to when interacting online (B(SE) = -0.15 (0.04), p = .001), but significantly more positive affect (B(SE) = 0.12 (0.04), p < .001) and less negative affect (B(SE) = -0.12 (0.03), p < .001) and loneliness (B(SE) = -0.65 (0.05), p < .001) when interacting face-to-face compared to online. Exploratory moderator analyses do not support the hypothesis that those with more social support experience greater benefits from online interaction. This study uniquely highlights both the momentary affective benefits and potential disadvantages of online interaction, thereby bringing clarification and nuance to this highly contentious topic.
•The relationship between digital communication and adolescent well-being is little investigated at the momentary level.•We investigated how adolescents feel at the moment that they interact online vs. face-to-face, vs. when they are alone.•Adolescents felt best when interacting face-to-face, and better when interacting online than when alone.•Adolescents reported more positive social experiences when with online interaction partners than with face-to-face partners.•Those with more social resources did not experience a greater benefit of digital communication .
•The Balance in Daily Life (BDL) scale assesses bodily balance during activities of daily living.•The BDL scale has good psychometric properties among populations of frail older patients.•It measures ...different dimensions of balance to those covered by existing scales.•Further studies are needed to determine its role alongside other balance scales.•Prospective studies should now test the ability of the scale to predict falls.
Balance disorders in older people cause falls, which can have serious functional and economic consequences. No existing scale relates fall risk to daily life situations. This study describes the development, psychometric properties and construct validity of the Balance in Daily Life (BDL) scale, comprising seven routine tasks including answering a phone, carrying a heavy bag, and sitting down and getting up from a chair.
Frail patients aged 65 years or more were prospectively recruited from the geriatric rehabilitation department of a French university hospital. Inclusion criteria included autonomous walking over 20 m and modified Short Emergency Geriatric Assessment score 8–11. Patients with motor skills disorders and comprehension or major memory difficulties were excluded. Patients were assessed on Day 3 and Day 30 with the Balance in Daily Life scale, Timed Up and Go, one-leg stance time, sternal nudge and walking-while-talking tests. The scale was assessed for acceptability, quality, unidimensionality, internal consistency, reliability, temporal stability, responsiveness and construct validity.
140 patients (83 ± 6 years) were recruited, of whom 139 were assessed at Day 0 and 133 at Day 30. Acceptability was satisfactory (134/139 patients completed the test), quality assessment showed a slight floor effect (6 % of patients with minimal score) and evaluation of item redundancy found no strong correlation (Spearman <0.7). Unidimensionality was verified (Loevinger H coefficient > 0.5 for all items except item 6 = 0.4728). Internal consistency was good (Cronbach alpha = 0.86). Reliability and temporal stability were excellent (ICC = 0.97 and ICC = 0.92). Responsiveness was verified by significant score change p < 0.0001 between Day 0 and Day 30 (decreased by 1 0; 2 point), in line with other score changes. Construct validity revealed that the Balance in Daily Life scale was convergent with results of the timed up-and-go and one-leg stance time (p < 0.0001 for both) and tended to be higher for participants who had not fallen in the previous 6 months (p = 0.0528). The new questionnaire was divergent to sternal nudge tests (p = 0.0002) and not related to the walking-while-talking test (p = 0.5969).
The Balance in Daily Life scale has good psychometric properties for this population. Its simplicity and innovative nature mean that it can be applied in institutions while being easily modifiable to domestic settings.
Study registration on clinicaltrials.gov: NCT0334382.
Reduced daily life physical activity (DLPA) in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) contributes to a poor quality of life.
Can actigraphy be used to assess changes in DLPA in patients with PAH ...receiving selexipag or placebo?
Effect of Selexipag on Daily Life Physical Activity of Patients With Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (TRACE) was a prospective, multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, exploratory phase 4 study enrolling patients with PAH in World Health Organization functional class II/III, receiving stable endothelin receptor antagonist with/without phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor background therapy. Primary end points were change from baseline to Week 24 in actigraphy-assessed DLPA (recorded by using an accelerometer), including daily time spent in nonsedentary physical activity (NSPA), daily time spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA), daily volume of activity, and daily number of steps.
At baseline, patients (N = 108) were prevalent, on stable background PAH therapy, and at low risk of disease progression. Patients showed high compliance with wear of the accelerometer throughout the study. From baseline to Week 24, mean daily time spent in NSPA increased by 1.1 min and decreased by 16.7 min in the selexipag and placebo groups (treatment difference 95% CI, 17.8 –6.0, 41.6 min); mean time spent in MVPA increased by 0.3 min and was reduced by 2.0 min in the selexipag and placebo groups (treatment difference 95% CI, 2.3 –10.8, 15.4 min); and mean number of daily steps decreased by 0.3 and 201.9 in the selexipag and placebo groups (treatment difference 95% CI, 201.6 –243.0, 646.2).
TRACE enrolled a prevalent population on background therapy and at low risk of disease progression. Changes in DLPA were small and highly variable, with no statistically significant differences between treatment groups. This patient-centric study was the first randomized trial in PAH to capture high-quality actigraphy data and to describe DLPA in terms of mean/median and variability, which may inform the design of future studies.
ClinicalTrials.gov; No.: NCT03078907; URL: www.clinicaltrials.gov
Our sensory functions decline with age. Older people have been reported to compensate for sensory deficits by using auxiliary equipment, medical treatments, and sensory mechanisms such as multimodal ...integrations. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no systematic surveys research for sensory problems of older people in daily life. Through an online survey, we investigated what kind of sensory problems exist and how these problems were coped with by older people (60─70 years old), with middle-aged people (40─50 years old) data. Frequency and text-mining analyses found that problems of hearing and body movements were reported more frequently for older people due to aging. Visual problems were reported by all age groups and were attributed to aging, but coped with by using auxiliary equipment and medical surgeries in older people. The 50’s age group reported visual problems most frequently. Our findings suggest that sensory problems subjectively felt in daily life are attributed to aging but are not necessarily remarkable in older people.
•The association between daily life changes and war-related anxiety symptoms is understudied.•We report a nationwide, opportunistic sample (N = 2,004) of adult parents in Ukraine.•The results show a ...positive dose-response association between the number of changes in daily life and war-related anxiety.
This study sought to explore the association between changes in daily life and war-related anxiety. In this study, we analyzed self-reported data from 2,004 Ukrainian adults, obtained through an opportunistic survey in the Ukraine. Our assessment focused on changes in everyday routines and generalized anxiety symptoms since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 24 February 2022. The data were collected between July-September 2022. Results show a significant dose-response connection between everyday routine changes and increased war-related anxiety. Not surprisingly, the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict is impacting the lives of Ukrainians. These changes are linked to heightened anxiety levels. Effective population-based crisis management should consider both war-related stressors and changes in daily life routines.
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