"Involving the Elderly in Mission" -A Service Project

As one church grew from a small immigrant church to a conglomerate of 1,200 members, the natural social networks were no longer adequate to support the population of older persons. Networks had to be made intentional through programming. A needs assessment of the senior population identified specific subgroups and their needs. Recognizing the diversity of the senior population, a broad spectrum of programs was established. An effort was made to maintain a balance between traditional and innovative. The senior program has strengthened the networking among seniors, increased their integration with the other age groups in the church, and provided an entry level for those new to the church. The program has also become known in the community, which has resulted in cooperation with other senior service organizations who provide education and training. The Area Agency on Aging, realizing the importance of the church to the senior population, has selected a member of the church community to serve on its Advisory Board.     

Religious Research in Gerontology, 1980–1994: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT

This article presents results of an NIA-funded systematic review of research on religion and aging published from 1980–1994 in mainstream gerontology and religion journals, including the Journal of Religious Gerontology. Findings are summarized from 73 empirical studies, a subset of the 115 articles included in NIA's bibliography on this topic. In general, these studies use multiethnic samples, include multiple religious dimensions, and focus on age comparative analyses and on analyses of religious effects on life satisfaction, health, and well-being. Also summarized is gerontological research on patterns, predictors, outcomes, and measures of religious involvement, and an agenda for future research is proposed.     

Diagnosing depression in patients with physical diseases using the beck depression inventory (BDI)

Abstract

Four-hundred-and-forty-three patients with a physical illness (355 with coronary heart disease and 88 with chronic pain), 150 unemployed persons and 623 subjects from the normal population in Jämtland, Sweden were tested using the BDI (Beck Depression Inventory). The aim of the study was to investigate whether scores on both the physical and non-physical components of the BDI differed between the patients and the other groups, or whether only the physical component was significantly higher in the patient group, and in such a case whether this could be interpreted as symptomatic of physical disease and not of depression. A cutoff score of ≥ 10 to determine mild depression and two different alternative physical and non-physical components were used. Forty-three percent of the patients with coronary heart disease and 50% of patients with chronic pain were categorized as being at least mildly depressed. Factor analyses indicated that a physical component comprising five items was the most meaningful and could best discriminate the physical symptoms. The patients' scores were significantly higher than those of the other two groups on the physical component but only higher than the normal population sample on the nun-physical component. This supports the idea that the items for physical symptoms in the BDI might be confounding when determining depression in patients with physical diseases. The non-physical component seems to be the best indicator of depression and is recommended as a complement to the total BDI scale when determining the degree of depression in patients suffering from a physical disease.     

Cognitive-behavioural Treatment of a Patient Suffering from Menière's Disease

Abstract

Vertigo and dizziness may cause considerable discomfort and feelings of uncertainty. It is no surprise that vertigo is the most disabling symptom in Menière's disease, an inner ear disorder. The other two cardinal symptoms are tinnitus and hearing impairment. In this study, one severely disabled woman was treated with a cognitive-behavioural treatment comprising, among other components, relaxation training, stabilization of gaze, cognitive restructuring and behavioural task setting. The patient responded well to the treatment, during which her vertigo attacks disappeared. During the follow-up period, she experienced vertigo attacks again, but after two booster sessions the vertigo attacks vanished for the rest of the follow-up period. The results are further discussed.     

Keep or trade? Effects of pay-off range on decisions with the two-envelops problem

The “two-envelops” problem has stimulated much discussion on probabilistic reasoning, but relatively little experimentation. The problem specifies two identical envelopes, one of which contains twice as much money as the other. You are given one of the envelopes and the option of keeping it or trading for the other envelope. Variables of interest include the possible amounts of money involved, what is known about the process by which the amounts of money were assigned to the envelopes, and whether you are allowed to know how much money is in the envelope in hand before deciding whether to keep or trade. In an earlier study, Butler and Nickerson found that when participants were allowed to know how much was in the envelope in hand, they generally elected to trade if that amount was small relative to the range of possibilities and to keep otherwise. The present experiments showed that this propensity was independent of the amount of money in the envelopes. Participants made decisions with a strong bias for avoiding the risk of losing by trading, particularly when the amount in hand was known and large relative to the range of possible amounts, regardless of the absolute value of the gamble. The results illustrate the dependence of thinking on the context in which it occurs, and demonstrate a tendency to treat quantities that are large or small relative to a particular context in which they are encountered as though they were large or small in a more general sense.     

The Portuguese version of Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination–Revised (ACE-R) in the diagnosis of subcortical vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease

The aim of this study was to investigate the accuracy of the Portuguese version of Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination–Revised (ACE-R) in detecting and differentiating early stage subcortical vascular dementia (SVD) from early stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Ninety-two subjects (18 SVD patients, 36 AD patients, and 38 healthy controls) were assessed using the ACE-R. Between-group’s differences were evaluated using the Quade’s rank analysis of covariance. The diagnostic accuracy and discriminatory ability of the ACE-R were examined via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. The ACE-R was able to successfully discriminate between patients and healthy subjects. The mean ACE-R total scores differed between SVD and AD patients; there were also significant differences in attention and orientation and in memory measures between the groups. An optimal cut-off of 72/73 was found for the detection of AD (sensitivity: 97%; specificity: 92%) and SVD (sensitivity: 100%; specificity: 92%).     

Modeling recall memory for emotional objects in Alzheimer's disease

ABSTRACT

Objective: To examine whether emotional memory (EM) of objects with self-reference in Alzheimer's disease (AD) can be modeled with binomial logistic regression in a free recall and an object recognition test to predict EM enhancement.?Method: Twenty patients with AD and twenty healthy controls were studied. Six objects (three presented as gifts) were shown to each participant. Ten minutes later, a free recall and a recognition test were applied. The recognition test had target–objects mixed with six similar distracter objects. Participants were asked to name any object in the recall test and identify each object in the recognition test as known or unknown.?Results: The total of gift objects recalled in AD patients (41.6%) was larger than neutral objects (13.3%) and a significant EM recall effect for gifts was found (Wilcoxon: p < .003). EM was not found for recognition in AD patients due to a ceiling effect. Healthy older adults scored overall higher in recall and recognition but showed no EM enhancement due to a ceiling effect. A logistic regression showed that likelihood of emotional recall memory can be modeled as a function of MMSE score (p < .014) and object status (p < .0001) as gift or non-gift.?Conclusion: Recall memory was enhanced in AD patients for emotional objects indicating that EM in mild to moderate AD although impaired can be provoked with strong emotional load. The logistic regression model suggests that EM declines with the progression of AD rather than disrupts and may be a useful tool for evaluating magnitude of emotional load.     

Recognition memory deficits in mild cognitive impairment

ABSTRACT

There is no agreement on the pattern of recognition memory deficits characteristic of patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Whereas lower performance in recollection is the hallmark of MCI, there is a strong controversy about possible deficits in familiarity estimates when using recognition memory tasks. The aim of this research is to shed light on the pattern of responding in recollection and familiarity in MCI. Five groups of participants were tested. The main participant samples were those formed by two MCI groups differing in age and an Alzheimer's disease group (AD), which were compared with two control groups. Whereas one of the control groups served to assess the performance of the MCI and AD people, the other one, composed of young healthy participants, served the purpose of evaluating the adequacy of the experimental tasks used in the evaluation of the different components of recognition memory. We used an associative recognition task as a direct index of recollection and a choice task on a pair of stimuli, one of which was perceptually similar to those studied in the associative recognition phase, as an index of familiarity. Our results indicate that recollection decreases with age and neurological status, and familiarity remains stable in the elderly control sample but it is deficient in MCI. This research shows that a unique encoding situation generated deficits in recollective and familiarity mechanisms in mild cognitive impaired individuals, providing evidence for the existence of deficits in both retrieval processes in recognition memory in a MCI stage.     

Differential impacts of age of acquisition on letter and semantic fluency in Alzheimer's disease patients and healthy older adults

The degree to which the typical age of acquisition (AoA) of words and word frequency have separable influences on verbal production tasks has been strongly debated. To examine the overlap between these factors in verbal fluency tasks, the performance of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients (N?=?34) and normal elderly controls (N?=?36) was compared on semantic (e.g., vegetables) and letter (e.g., words that begin with F) fluency tasks. These comparisons revealed that words generated for the semantic fluency task had an earlier AoA while words generated for the letter fluency task had a higher word frequency. Differences in AoA between AD patients and controls were larger for semantic than letter fluency. These results suggest that AoA has an effect on verbal production that is independent of word frequency and that AoA has a semantic locus.