Evaluating In-home Assistive Technology for Dementia Caregivers.

OBJECTIVES: Dementia caregivers (CGs) are at heightened risk for developing problems with anxiety and depression. Much attention has been directed toward developing and deploying interventions designed to protect CG health, but few have been supported by rigorous empirical evidence. Technology-based interventions that are effective, scalable, and do not add greatly to the CG burden are of particular interest. METHODS: We conducted a nine-month randomized controlled trial in 63 homes evaluating People Power Caregiver (PPCg), a system of sensors in the home connected to cloud-based software that alerts CGs about worrisome deviations from normal patterns (e.g., falls, wandering). RESULTS: CGs in the active condition had significantly less anxiety than those in the control condition at the six-month assessment. Greater anxiety reduction in the active condition at the six-month assessment was associated with greater interaction with PPCg via SMS text messages. There were no differences in anxiety at the three-month or nine-month assessments or in depression at any assessment. CONCLUSIONS: PPCg shows promise for reducing anxiety associated with caring for a =person with dementia. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Technology-based interventions can help reduce CG anxiety, a major adverse consequence of caregiving that may be difficult to treat due to other demands on caregiver time and energy.

Responding to the emotions of others: Age differences in facial expressions and age-specific associations with relational connectedness.

Responding prosocially to the emotion of others may become increasingly important in late life, especially as partners and friends encounter a growing number of losses, challenges, and declines. Facial expressions are important avenues for communicating empathy and concern, and for signaling that help is forthcoming when needed. In a study of young, middle-aged, and older adults, we measured emotional responses (facial expressions, subjective experience, and physiological activation) to a sad, distressing film clip and a happy, uplifting film clip. Results revealed that, relative to younger adults, older adults showed more sadness and confusion/concern facial expressions during the distressing film clip. Moreover, for older adults only, more sadness and fewer disgust facial expressions during the distressing film clip were associated with higher levels of relational connectedness. These findings remained stable when accounting for subjective emotional experience, physiological activation, and trait empathy in response to the film clip. When examining the uplifting film clip, older adults showed more happiness facial expressions relative to younger adults at trend levels. More facial expressions of happiness were associated with higher levels of relational connectedness, but unlike the effect of sadness expressions, this was not moderated by age. These findings underscore an important adaptive social function of facial expressions-particularly in response to the distress of others-in late life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).