Key Q - Cognitive Flashcards
What is Dementia?
Chronic/persistent disorder of mental processes caused by brain disease or injury marked by memory disorders, personality changes + impaired reasoning
What are the Different Types of Dementa?
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Vascular dementia
- Frontotemporal dementia
- Mixed dementia
What is Mixed Dementia?
Combination of a number of different types of dementia
What is Frontotemporal Dementia?
Predominantly affects personality - can include psychosis + OCD
What is Vascular Dementia?
Result of small strokes degeneration of blood vessels + therefore oxygen to parts of brain
What is Alzheimer’s Disease?
- Affects LTM, increased confusion, language + spatial problems, lacks insight to situation
- Inability to recall recent events, general forgetfulness characterised by losing things, poor organisational skills, poor decision
What are Symptoms of Dementia?
- Loss of memory
- Confusion
- Other cognitive deficits
- Depression
- Mood swings
- Exhaustion
Why is Dementia an Important Issue in Society?
- Dementia affects many people - affects 850,000 people in UK
- One of the major causes of disability + dependancy among older people
- Dementia costs the NHS £23 billion per year
- Dementia causes psychological + economic harm for the people who have it + their carers
- Physical, emotional + financial pressures arise
How to apply Episodic Memory to Help Patients with Dementia?
- Patients don’t lose all memories
- Lose memories of events from in their past
- Tulvings ideas about episodic LTM apply to this
- Patients keep memories from their youth right to the end
- So, to help some practitioners advocate listening to the dementia patients memories + don’t distress by contradicting
How to Apply Semantic Memory to Help Patients with Dementia?
- Semantic memory seems to be lost separately
- Schmolck study into semantic LTM applies to this - they found semantic LTM is stored in a different part of the brain
- Steyvers + Hemmer shown the importance of prior knowledge when trying to recall events - damage to semantic memory can cause failure in the effect of prior knowledge
- So, it would help to give the patient some prior knowledge, through displaying or explaining something
How to Apply Multi-Store Memory Model to Help Patients with Dementia?
- Patients may forget what they’ve been told - If info hasn’t encoded properly or if they have a problem w/ retrieval from STM to LTM
- Which would explain why they say things that don’t make sense
- Successful method - employ more specific questioning rather than general questioning - give person time to rehearse the info one bit at a time - photographs/notes can help replace STM
How to Apply Working Memory Model to Help Patients with Dementia?
- Multi-tasking should be avoided as difficult for people with dementia
- Competition between central executive, phonological loop + visuospatial sketch pad should be avoided as it explain confusion + problems when thinking/reasoning
- So, to help you can reduce background noise when trying to concentrate on another task + only 1 person talking at a time
How to Apply Reconstructive Memory to Help Patients with Dementia?
- Patients w/ dementia may be using mixed schemas or struggling to retrieve the correct schema
- So, to help you could play patients old songs, play childhood games, visit familiar looking places, describe cues to help patient recall the correct schema
What is Cognitive Stimulation?
- Focus on early memories from childhood + young adulthood
- Most patients can access these episodic memories as it fades slower
- Semantic Melody can help link episodic memories together
- Enabling patients time retrieve more and more details from LTM
How is cognitive psychology research into memory for people with dementia useful for society?
- It explains how people with dementia can be helped
- It explains how the memory is made up of different components
- But, you need to take a holistic view - taking social + biological aspects in to account to develop effective treatment plans
What is the Baddeley et al (2001) study which provides evidence for memory models explanation of dementia?
Found:
•Marked impairment in the capacity of Alzheimer’s disease patients to combine performance on 2 simultaneous tasks compared to performance of healthy elderly group
•Shows - how the central executive in WMM is affected by dementia
What is the Steyvers + Hemmer (2012) study which provides evidence for memory models explanation of dementia?
- Investigate interaction between episodic + prior knowledge in a natural environment
- Found - prior knowledge from semantic memory contribute to recall in episodic tasks
- Study high in ecological validity
- Shows how giving patients prior knowledge can help them access episodic memories
What is the Schmolck et al (2002) study which provides evidence for memory models explanation of dementia?
- Studied brain damaged patients
- Conclude - semantic patients whose impairment is restricted to the anterolateral temporal cortex is consistent with a loss of semantic knowledge
- Found - semantic LTM is storer in different part of brain from episodic memory
- But, his cases lack generalisability as they are case studies which are rare + small
How do Tulvings ideas of episodic + semantic LTM apply to Hogeway nursing home?
- Recent episodic memory is lost
- So, patients find their present situation distressing
- Staff don’t contradict resistentes
Why is Validation Therapy considered Controversial?
- Critics say that psychologists have an ethical duty not to deceive people
- Hogeway is a giant deception designed to put dementia sufferers at ease
How can Reconstructive Memory be Applied to the Dementia Village at Hogeway?
- Different parts of the village = different set of schemas
- Patient who grew up wealthy - has schemas as the high class part of Hogeway - find it easier to remember things like episodes/procedures - more active
- This in contrast to normal hospitals - that are strange places for most people
What is the Dementia village?
- De Hogeweyk operated by a nursing home Hogeway
- In Netherlands
- Care for elders w/ dementia
What is the Benefit of using all day Reminiscence Therapy ay Hogeway, Compared to Traditional Nursing Homes?
- Patients are more active
- Patients require less medication
- Patients hace 24-hour care
What is Providence Mount St Vincent Residential Home?
- Residential home for 400 patients
- In Seattle, USA
- Attempts to use holistic ways of helping people w/ dementia
- Offers number of therapies which are founded in cognitive psychology
How can Reconstructive Memory be Applied to Cognitive Stimulation Therapy?
- If memories are reconstructed using schemas, anything that reinstates schemas will hrlp memory
- The kindergarten at the Mount residential home - reminds sufferers about when they had children/when they were kids - activating schemas
How does Cognitive Stimultion Therapy Help Patients with Dementia Stimulate the Mind?
- Patients are together - they discuss, play games, do puzzles
- Activities are linked to memories - e.g. looking at old photos
Who does Cognitive Stimulation Work Best For?
For patients in the mild to moderate stages of dementia
What can Cognitive Stimulation Do?
Can slow down the progress of the disease + reduce stress and loneliness
What is your Key Question for Cognitive Psychology?
How can psychologists understanding of memory help patients with dementia?
What is the most common type of dementia?
Alzheimer’s disease
