Educational Program Using Robots for Preventing Cognitive Decline of Elderly Persons.

An expected surge of dementia patients in Japan indicates a pressing need to establish countermeasures. As described herein, by developing an educational program for elderly people using robots, we performed a demonstration experiment. Results revealed that involvement of elderly people with robots enhances their enjoyment, indicating a future direction of cognitive decline prevention education for elderly people.

Development of a Practical Course to Assist Elementary School Students in Acquiring the Ability to Support for Elderly People with Dementia.

Support for elderly people with dementia is required in the community. Many elementary school students are taking dementia kids supporter training courses, but it is difficult to nurture the ability to correctly understand and respond to dementia. By using multiple information communication technologies, we developed a practical program with concrete response method to convey knowledge on supporting of elderly people with dementia.

Virtual Teaching Materials Developed for Elementary School Students to Foster Support Capabilities for Elderly People with Dementia.

We created teaching materials for elementary school students to foster their ability to understand and support elderly people correctly, including those with dementia, without prejudice. Pediatric awareness education by DVDs can positively capture the elderly with dementia, but it was difficult to learn in practice. There, Slide materials designed to encourage positive understanding of elderly people were used together with a Pepper to increase participants' interest material. Results suggest that simultaneous use of the slide materials and a Pepper maintains participants' interest and promotes understanding of elderly people, including those with dementia.

Development of Teaching Materials of Dementia by Incorporating a Communications Robot for Schoolchildren Who Are Dementia Supporters.

In this study, we aimed to teach elementary school students how to practically deal with elderly people with dementia and developed and evaluated teaching materials using a communication robot called Pepper. The teaching material used the robot to model representative symptoms seen in elderly people with dementia in a realistic context. We applied the two principles of Merrill's first principle and the ARCS model to achieve learning objectives and sustain learning motivation. Furthermore, to verify the effectiveness of the teaching materials, we conducted a questionnaire survey on five experts in community welfare. As a result, it was speculated that by using Pepper, motivation for learning increases and learning can be effectively accomplished. In the future, we aim to introduce the function to the teaching materials based on the evaluation and introduce it to kids' dementia supporter training course.