Applying a Person-Centered Approach to Enhance Cognitive Training in Senior Living Community Residents With Mild Cognitive Impairment

The PEP system is built on a picture-based touch-screen interface on tablet computers. PEP allows users to explore and participate in entertainment, educational, spiritual, and other recreational activities and content personalized according to their interests and preferences. It provides easy access to the Internet and communication applications, and has hundreds of modules spanning music, travel, trivia, games, and religious and inspirational domains. For instance, if music is among a person's lifelong interests, the system provides access to multiple music genres through jukebox, karaoke and therapeutic music applications that can be tailored to a particular activity and by individual interest (for instance, a preference for classic jazz). As another example, for someone who likes travel or visiting new places, the interface offers access to Google Earth, guided tours, slide shows and regional facts and history.

VSOP training will use five training paradigms (Eye for detail, Peripheral challenge, Visual sweep, Double decision, Target tracker) that practice processing speed and attention. All exercises share visual components and focus on accuracy and fast reaction times. Participants respond either by identifying what object they see or where they see it on the screen. The training will automatically adjust the difficulty of each task based on the participant's performance, ensuring that the participants always operate near their optimal capacity. The training programs will automatically record the percentage of completion of each game and scores.