Final Weeks

I've been terrible about getting these last few out so I'm going to just summarize my time over hte last few weeks. After I decided upon which C&D residents I was going to study, I moved into attempting to replicate the research tests I performed on the three other residents to the best of my ability. There was a definitive difference in the reaction times of the C&D residents as opposed to the A&B residents, which is to be expected, as the gap in progression of dementia between the two halves of the residency home is noticeable. I spent some time getting to know Mo and Genevieve before running tests on them, as I did with the other residents, however their dementia had progressed to a point where memory of their past or childhood was almost nonexistent.

What I managed to get a handle on from the activities representative who works with them was that Genevieve grew up on a farm in Nebraska, and Mo grew up and lived in New Orleans. I tested the two of them using the game crazy eights. I observed that without music, Genevieve had some difficulty with handling multiple patterns at once, for instance, the fact that a card of the same suit or same number/face could be played. Usually she would either be unaware of one of the two options, or would question my move that satisfied one of those two conditions. Mo was much further limited than Genevieve, she mainly struggled with figuring out what her cards were, and would get lost in finding out that information and forget where she was. It was because of that drastic difference that led me to ask about her to one of her caretakers, who informed me she was going through a period of decline. When I probed further, she made me aware that once residents reach C&D they go through a pattern of declines and plateaus, during declines they exhibit some of the symptoms of depression, such as exhaustion and constant sleep, however they will still move to participate in activities, but will usually sit alone and nap during them. For my remaining time of study she was in a decline stage, and was thus not conducive to research.

I moved on to Genevieve after wards, and managed to run tests on her with country, Frank Sinatra, Elvis and Rock. With Frank Sinatra on, Genevieve displayed an increased frequency in remembering both sets of conditions for playable cards, as well as displaying more focus on the game. With Elvis she displayed a similar improvement, with a slightly sunnier disposition. I expected to see some kind of specific reaction to country, similar to how Tom reacted to the live performance gospel music, and how Mo reacted to eh live performance  motown music. I was surprised to find out that her reaction to country music was almost identical to her reaction to Elvis in respect to its scale. An even more surprising find was that, when I played rock music, Genevieve had noticeably faster reaction time, though it was still slower, and she was able to react emotionally and respond to my jokes and comments. This leads me to believe that her triggers with respect to music are influenced by music she hasn't hear before, or at least a genre or style that isn't familiar to her, since Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and the older country music I played as a part of these tests were commonplace at the residency home, whereas the rock music playlist I played took most of its songs from a much later time. That summarizes the research I was able to perform over the last few weeks.