Everyday Remembering During a Global Pandemic in Caring Dyads

During the COVID-19 global pandemic people’s lived experiences and day-to-day lives have been tremendously impacted. This impact is believed to be more severe in people with a memory-impaired partner at home. As part of an ongoing cognitive intervention project with the Emory-Georgia Tech Cognitive Empowerment Program (CEP), we conducted interviews with dyads (one person with diagnosed amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and one person, in this case, a spouse who is an identified care partner). To address the COVID-19 pandemic, we supplemented the existing interview about everyday cognition with several questions about the dyadic experience during the pandemic. To date, we have conducted 5 qualitative interviews with dyads. Preliminary results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has created additional everyday challenges and cognitive burden for care partners of people diagnosed with aMCI. Some of these challenges include the need to manage pandemic precautionary behaviors, such as mask wearing and maintaining social distancing, for both themselves and the care recipient. In contrast, some aspects of everyday remembering among these dyads have improved (e.g. more advance planning of things like grocery shopping and outings). The results of these interviews will provide additional unique insights into the everyday cognitive challenges of the pandemic on caregivers and persons with aMCI.

Design Applications for Social Remembering

With the increasing availability of technology, the number of digital media people create, such as digital photos, has exploded. At the same time, the number of media they organize has decreased. Many personal media are created for mnemonic reasons, but are often not used as intended or desired. We see this as a design opportunity for supporting new experiences using personal digital media. Our people-centered design perspectives start in the real world, in people’s everyday lives, in which remembering is often a social and collaborative activity. This social activity involves multiple people in different situations, and includes digital media that can serve as memory cues. In this chapter, we present six concept designs for interactive products, specifically conceived to support everyday remembering activities that vary in their degree of socialness. From these concepts, five design characteristics emerge: social situation; type of event; social effect; media process; and media interaction.

Does a state of alcohol hangover impair event based prospective memory?

IntroductionThe alcohol hangover state (AHS) is characterized by range of symptoms (e.g., drowsiness, fatigue, gastro-intestinal problems, dry mouth, nausea, sweating) that remain after ones blood-alcohol level returns to zero following a recent bout of excessive drinking. Recent findings have revealed a range of cognitive deficits associated with an AHS, including memory deficits. It is less clear what impact the AHS has upon everyday remembering; of which prospective memory is an excellent example (PM: memory for future plans/actions; such as remembering to perform a task at a specific time).AimsThe present study explored whether the AHS impairs everyday PM.MethodsTwenty-one AHS participants were compared with 28 non-AHS controls using a between-groups design. All completed a prospective remembering video procedure (prvp), which measured event-based pm. the prvp required the participant first to memorise a series of specific action-locations combinations and then to recall these combinations whilst viewing a CD clip of a busy shopping high street. Drug use (alcohol, smoking, etc.) and mood (anxiety and depression) were also measured, as these have been shown to have a deleterious impact upon PM.ResultsThe AHS group recalled significantly fewer event-based PM combinations on the PRVP compared with the non-AHS control group (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences between the groups on age, smoking, alcohol use or mood.ConclusionThese results confirm that a state of alcohol hangover impedes everyday prospective memory. The wider implications will be discussed at conference.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.