A useful development in measuring activities of daily living

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 1417-1417
Author(s):  
David Ames
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Editorial Team ◽  
Amyloid Pet ◽  
Prodromal Ad ◽  
Prodromal Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
User Friendly

Standard activities of daily living (ADL) scales developed in the 1960s and 1970s do not capture the subtle impairments seen in individuals with progressive mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which in many cases is due to prodromal Alzheimer's disease (AD). Given the promise of treatments now in development to modify the underlying AD process, early detection of MCI may become very important in future. De Vriendt and colleagues, whose paper has been chosen by the editorial team of International Psychogeriatrics, to be paper of the month in this issue, are to be congratulated for developing and validating the advanced ADL tool with the aim of providing a useful ADL measure to distinguish normal from pathological cognitive aging. They have assessed a large sample (150 people with AD, MCI and healthy controls) and report acceptable parameters for discrimination of these three groups using the instrument they have developed. The next step will be to try it out in a variety of clinical populations, settings, and cultures and perhaps to see how well it stacks up against other methods of detecting preclinical and prodromal AD (e.g. amyloid PET scans or lumbar punctures). The publication of this very good paper will allow other teams around the world to start using this user-friendly instrument and I await the outcome of further work on it with great interest.

Tools of Transformation: Appropriate Technology in U.S. Countercultural Literature

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Peter Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Appropriate Technology ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Environmental Transformation ◽  
Buckminster Fuller ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Environmentally Sound ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Second Wave

This essay takes its cue from second-wave ecocriticism and from recent scholarly interest in the “appropriate technology” movement that evolved during the 1960s and 1970s in California and elsewhere. “Appropriate technology” (or AT) refers to a loosely-knit group of writers, engineers and designers active in the years around 1970, and more generally to the counterculture’s promotion, development and application of technologies that were small-scale, low-cost, user-friendly, human-empowering and environmentally sound. Focusing on two roughly contemporary but now largely forgotten American texts Sidney Goldfarb’s lyric poem “Solar-Heated-Rhombic-Dodecahedron” (1969) and Gurney Norman’s novel Divine Right’s Trip (1971)—I consider how “hip” literary writers contributed to eco-technological discourse and argue for the 1960s counterculture’s relevance to present-day ecological concerns. Goldfarb’s and Norman’s texts interest me because they conceptualize iconic 1960s technologies—especially the Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic dome and the Volkswagen van—not as inherently alienating machines but as tools of profound individual, social and environmental transformation. Synthesizing antimodernist back-to-nature desires with modernist enthusiasm for (certain kinds of) machinery, these texts adumbrate a humanity- and modernity-centered post-wilderness model of environmentalism that resonates with the dilemmas that we face in our increasingly resource-impoverished, rapidly warming and densely populated world.

Communication Through Haptics During Human Collaborative Manipulation

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (03) ◽  
pp. 1850003
Author(s):  
Maria Javaid
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
User Study ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Elderly Person ◽  
Machine Learning Techniques ◽  
Communication Interface ◽  
Assistive Robot ◽  
Haptic Communication ◽  
User Friendly

This paper describes research towards understanding haptic communication during planar object manipulation. In particular, a classification algorithm that classifies four stages of manipulation of a planar object is described. This research was performed as a part of a broader research project which has the goal of developing a user-friendly communication interface for an elderly-assistive robot. The manipulation of planar object was studied in detail as it happened very frequently during user study involving a caregiver helping an elderly person with the activities of daily living. For observing human haptic interaction, a sensory glove was developed. Further data collection was conducted in the laboratory setting and data was analyzed using various machine learning techniques. Based on this analysis, decision rules were derived that give insight into human-to-human collaborative manipulation of planar objects and successfully identified several classes of manipulative actions. The developed decision tree-based algorithm was then tested on the data of a user study that involved a caregiver assisting an elderly person in the activities of daily living. The developed algorithm also successfully classifies manipulation actions in real-time. This information is particularly interesting as it does not depend on any particular sensor and thus can be used by other researchers to further study haptic communication.

A review of instrumental ADL assessments for use with elderly people

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Ward ◽  
Carol Jagger ◽  
William Harper
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Standardized Tests ◽  
Elderly People ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Primary Level ◽  
Instrumental Activities ◽  
Hierarchical Nature ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Definition Of

The concept of formal or standardized tests for assessing function came to the fore in the 1960s. Katz et al. acknowledged the hierarchical nature of activities of daily living (ADL) such as eating, continence, transferring, going to the toilet, dressing and bathing in his ’Index of ADL’ and by 1968 ‘ADL’ was an accepted Index Medicus category. The definition of instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) began in 1969 with the work of Lawton and Brody who presented two scales to assess function which recognized the different degrees of complexity required for performing functional tasks. The first scale, taking life maintenance and activities essential for self-care as the primary level, was called the Physical Self-Maintenance Scale.

scholarly journals Two-year course of cognitive function and instrumental activities of daily living in older adults with bipolar disorder: evidence for neuroprogression?

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 801-811 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. G. Gildengers ◽  
D. Chisholm ◽  
M. A. Butters ◽  
S. J. Anderson ◽  
A. Begley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Cognitive Function ◽  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Time Points ◽  
Instrumental Activities

BackgroundWhile bipolar disorder (BD) is a leading cause of disability, and an important contributor to disability in BD is cognitive impairment, there is little systematic research on the longitudinal course of cognitive function and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) in late-life. In this report, we characterize the 2-year course of cognitive function and IADLs in older adults with BD.MethodWe recruited non-demented individuals 50 years and older with BD I or BD II (n = 47) from out-patient clinics or treatment studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Comparator subjects (‘controls’) were 22 individuals of comparable age and education with no psychiatric or neurologic history, but similar levels of cardiovascular disease. We assessed cognitive function and IADLs at baseline, 1- and 2-year time-points. The neuropsychological evaluation comprised 21 well-established and validated tests assessing multiple cognitive domains. We assessed IADLs using a criterion-referenced, performance-based instrument. We employed repeated-measures mixed-effects linear models to examine trajectory of cognitive function. We employed non-parametric tests for analysis of IADLs.ResultsThe BD group displayed worse cognitive function in all domains and worse IADL performance than the comparator group at baseline and over follow-up. Global cognitive function and IADLs were correlated at all time-points. The BD group did not exhibit accelerated cognitive decline over 2 years.ConclusionsOver 2 years, cognitive impairment and associated functional disability of older adults with BD appear to be due to long-standing neuroprogressive processes compounded by normal cognitive aging rather than accelerated cognitive loss in old age.

Development of Power Assist Wear Using Pneumatic Rubber Artificial Muscles

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 607-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshiro Noritsugu ◽  
◽  
Masahiro Takaiwa ◽  
Daisuke Sasaki
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Artificial Muscle ◽  
Innovative Technology ◽  
Artificial Muscles ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Assist Device ◽  
Assist Devices ◽  
Heavy Work ◽  
User Friendly

In the future, when the average age of the members of society becomes advanced, an innovative technology to assist the activities of daily living of elderly and disabled people and to assist in the heavy work in nursing will be desired. To develop such a technology, an actuator that is safe and user-friendly is required. It should be small, lightweight, and sufficiently soft. Such an actuator is available in artificial muscle made of pneumatic rubber. We have developed some types of pneumatic rubber artificial muscles and applied them to wearable power assist devices. A wearable power assist device is fitted to the human body to assist the power of muscles that support the activities of daily living, rehabilitation, training, and so on. In this paper, some types of pneumatic rubber artificial muscles developed and manufactured in our laboratory are presented. Furthermore, two kinds of wearable power assist devices driven by the rubber artificial muscles are described. Finally, some evaluations clarify the effectiveness of pneumatic rubber artificial muscle for innovative human assistance technologies.

Discriminative power of the advanced activities of daily living (a-ADL) tool in the diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment in an older population

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 1419-1427 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. De Vriendt ◽  
T. Mets ◽  
M. Petrovic ◽  
E. Gorus
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Clinical Evaluation ◽  
Predictive Value ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Functional Decline ◽  
Community Dwelling ◽  
Discriminative Power

ABSTRACTBackground:Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is characterized by subjective and objective memory impairments in the absence of manifest functional decline. Mild changes in activities of daily living (ADL) can be present and probably predict conversion to dementia. A new advanced (a)-ADL tool was developed, evaluating high-level activities and, taking each participant as their own reference, distinguishing a global Disability Index (a-ADL-DI), a Cognitive Disability Index (a-ADL-CDI), and a Physical Disability Index (a-ADL-PDI), based on the number of activities performed and the severity and causes of the functional problem. This study evaluates the discriminative validity of the a-ADL in MCI.Method:Based upon clinical evaluation and a set of global, cognitive, mood, and functional assessments, 150 community-dwelling participants (average age 80.3 years (SD 5; 66–91)) were included and diagnosed as (1) cognitively healthy participants (n = 50); (2) patients with a-MCI (n = 48), or (3) mild to moderate AD (n = 52). The a-ADL tool was not a part of the clinical evaluation.Results:The a-ADL-DI and the a-ADL-CDI showed a sensitivity and specificity ranging from 70% to 94.2%, Positive Predictive Value ranging from 70% till 93.8%, and Negative Predictive Value from 64.4% and 93.8%, an area under the curve (AUC) ranging from 0.791 to 0.960. Functional decline related to physical deficits, as assessed by the a-ADL-PDI, did not discriminate between the different groups.Conclusion:The a-ADL tool has a good ability to distinguish normal and pathological cognitive aging. Its discriminative power for underlying causes of limitations may be an advantage.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document