Social robots for evaluating attention state in older adults
Journal
Sensors
Journal Volume
21
Journal Issue
21
Date Issued
2021-11-01
Author(s)
Abstract
Sustained attention is essential for older adults to maintain an active lifestyle, and the deficiency of this function is often associated with health-related risks such as falling and frailty. The present study examined whether the well-established age-effect on reducing mind-wandering, the drift to internal thoughts that are seen to be detrimental to attentional control, could be replicated by using a robotic experimenter for older adults who are not as familiar with online technologies. A total of 28 younger and 22 older adults performed a Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) by answering thought probes regarding their attention states and providing confidence ratings for their own task performances. The indices from the modified SART suggested a well-documented conservative response strategy endorsed by older adults, which were represented by slower responses and increased omission errors. Moreover, the slower responses and increased omissions were found to be associated with less self-reported mind-wandering, thus showing consistency with their higher subjective ratings of attentional control. Overall, this study demonstrates the potential of constructing age-related cognitive profiles with attention evaluation instruction based on a social companion robot for older adults at home.
Subjects
Aging; Cognitive evaluation; Mind-wandering; Social companion robot; Sustained attention
SDGs
Other Subjects
Robots; Active lifestyles; Age effects; Cognitive evaluation; Companion robot; Mind-wandering; Older adults; Related risk; Social companion robot; Social robots; Sustained attention; Health risks; aged; human; robotics; self report; short term memory; social interaction; task performance; Aged; Humans; Memory, Short-Term; Robotics; Self Report; Social Interaction; Task Performance and Analysis
Publisher
MDPI
Type
journal article