Lifelong Personality Traits and Interests of Alzheimer's Patients and Their Responses to Video Respite™

The effect of lifelong personality traits and interests of persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) on their participation in certain activities offered in long term care (LTC) facilities is not well documented. In this study, family caregivers of 11 institutionalized dementia (but predominantly Alzheimer's) patients rated selected premorbid personality traits of their impaired relatives and provided information on their past interests and preferences. The caregivers also predicted the responsiveness and attention of their relatives to Video Respite™ (VR), a videotape application designed primarily to capture and maintain the attention of cognitively impaired individuals. Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients indicated that responsiveness to VR was significantly correlated with only one factor of personality, Agreeableness. Eye contact was shown to be the measure of responsiveness most consistently correlated with premorbid personality traits. Content analysis indicated that responsiveness was not related to prior hobbies or interests. Caregivers, regardless of the perceived closeness of their relationship to the AD patient, were unable to accurately predict their relative's responsiveness to certain content areas of the videotape. Although additional research is warranted, the findings of this exploratory study suggest that responsiveness to a sensory stimulus such as VR may depend more heavily on contextual and environmental factors than on premorbid personality traits or prior interests and preferences.