Otake-Matsuura Mihoko, Tokunaga Seiki, Watanabe Kumi, Abe Masato S, Sekiguchi Takuya, Sugimoto Hikaru, Kishimoto Taishiro, Kudo Takashi
Center for Advanced Intelligence Project, RIKEN, Chuo-ku, Japan.
Department of Neuropsychiatry, School of Medicine, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.
Front Robot AI. 2021 Apr 12;8:633076. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2021.633076. eCollection 2021.
Social interaction might prevent or delay dementia, but little is known about the specific effects of various social activity interventions on cognition. This study conducted a single-site randomized controlled trial (RCT) of Photo-Integrated Conversation Moderated by Robots (PICMOR), a group conversation intervention program for resilience against cognitive decline and dementia. In the RCT, PICMOR was compared to an unstructured group conversation condition. Sixty-five community-living older adults participated in this study. The intervention was provided once a week for 12 weeks. Primary outcome measures were the cognitive functions; process outcome measures included the linguistic characteristics of speech to estimate interaction quality. Baseline and post-intervention data were collected. PICMOR contains two key features: 1) photos taken by the participants are displayed and discussed sequentially; and 2) a robotic moderator manages turn-taking to make sure that participants are allocated the same amount of time. Among the primary outcome measures, one of the subcategories of cognitive functions, verbal fluency significantly improved in the intervention group. Among the process outcome measures, a part of the subcategories of linguistic characteristics of speech, the amount of speech and richness of words, proportion of providing topics, questions, and answers in total utterances were larger for the intervention group. This study demonstrated for the first time the positive effects of a robotic social activity intervention on cognitive function in healthy older adults via RCT. The group conversation generated by PICMOR may improve participants' verbal fluency since participants have more opportunity to provide their own topics, asking and answering questions which results in exploring larger vocabularies. PICMOR is available and accessible to community-living older adults. UMIN Clinical Trials Registry, identifier UMIN000036667.
社交互动可能预防或延缓痴呆症，但对于各种社交活动干预对认知的具体影响却知之甚少。本研究针对“机器人辅助照片整合对话”（PICMOR）开展了一项单中心随机对照试验（RCT），这是一项针对抵御认知衰退和痴呆症的群体对话干预项目。在该RCT中，将PICMOR与非结构化群体对话条件进行了比较。65名社区居住的老年人参与了本研究。干预每周进行一次，共12周。主要结局指标是认知功能；过程结局指标包括言语的语言特征以评估互动质量。收集了基线数据和干预后数据。PICMOR包含两个关键特征：1）依次展示并讨论参与者拍摄的照片；2）由机器人主持人管理轮流发言，以确保参与者获得相同的发言时间。在主要结局指标中，干预组的认知功能子类别之一，即言语流畅性显著改善。在过程结局指标中，言语语言特征的部分子类别，干预组的言语量、词汇丰富度、在总话语中提供话题、问题和答案的比例更大。本研究首次通过RCT证明了机器人社交活动干预对健康老年人认知功能的积极影响。PICMOR产生的群体对话可能会提高参与者的言语流畅性，因为参与者有更多机会提供自己的话题、提问和回答问题，从而拓展词汇量。PICMOR可供社区居住的老年人使用。UMIN临床试验注册库，标识符UMIN000036667。
