MeTAP: A Personalized Spatial Memory Training for Improving Functional Autonomy of Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairments in China

Motivated by previous studies on increasing the autonomy of older adults with dementia, research on the effectiveness of spaced repetition as a learning strategy, and the ever increasing number of left-behind elderly in Chinese urban and especially rural areas, we develop a customizable spatial memory training mobile application to help improve adults with early dementia and mild cognitive impairments with performing instrumental activities of daily living by training important spatial information. The mobile application comes with two paired modes: Caregiver mode and Patient mode. It allows caregivers to create virtual rooms in which items are tagged and placed in. The person with dementia can then test his or her recall of the spatial location of items in different rooms with an intuitive touch-based interaction. Data collected during present and past training sessions then determines future training sessions and provide caregivers a way to track performance over time. Additionally, through cloud-based behavioral modeling and remote data sharing, it can enable personalized spaced repetition memory learning and offer real-time behavioral data for the medical specialist and caregivers. Three rounds of evaluation involving interviews and in-field testing had been conducted with promising results.