Increasing Activity Engagement Among People with Dementia

Abstract

People with dementia are often observed to display low levels of engagement in daily living and leisure activities. The present study primarily aimed to replicate a check-in procedure utilising frequent prompts and praise, used by Engelman, Altus, and Mathews (1999), to increase activity engagement among residents of a secure dementia care unit. The second aim was to see if increased levels of activity engagement also resulted in changes in the levels of social interaction and affective behaviour. Five residents, all diagnosed with severe dementia (as evident by MMSE scores between 0 and 3) participated in the study. The effects of the check-in procedure were assessed using a concurrent multiple baseline across participants incorporating partial withdrawal. Results show that the procedure was moderately to highly effective in increasing activity engagement for 4 out of the 5 participants. However, increased levels of activity engagement did not correspond to increased levels of social interaction or affective behaviour. The results of this study further support that the check-in procedure is an efficient way to increase activity engagement among people with severe dementia.