Wayfinding Strategies and Spatial Anxiety in Older Adults With and Without Alzheimer's Disease.
Rebecca Davis, Amy Veltkamp
PMID 31697391WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults with early-stage Alzheimer's disease reported using fewer orientation strategies and having more spatial anxiety than controls.
Anxiety was higher in both men and women with disease, not just women.
Key findings
01Older adults with early-stage AD reported using fewer orientation strategies than controls.
02Older adults with early-stage AD reported more spatial anxiety than controls, and this was true for men and women.
03Orientation strategy use was negatively correlated with spatial anxiety, while route strategy use was not.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample was small (88 participants), so the results may not generalise widely. Wayfinding strategy and anxiety were self-reported by people with memory impairment, and their ability to answer may have been impaired. The study included only early-stage Alzheimer's disease or mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease, so it does not show what happens in later disease. The participants were mostly Caucasian (96.5%), which limits how well the results may apply to other groups. The wayfinding scales had not been tested in older adults before this study, and three questions were removed after factor analysis. The study did not test whether reducing anxiety or changing environments improves wayfinding.
Declared interests
The article is listed as receiving NIH extramural research support. The supplied text does not include an author conflict-of-interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that spatial anxiety causes poor wayfinding or that reassurance will improve navigation. This was a descriptive correlational study using self-report, and it did not test any wayfinding intervention.