LEARNING ABILITY FOR TWO SPATIAL ORIENTATION SYSTEMS IN ELDERLY NURSING HOME RESIDENTS |
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| Authors: | Diane K Klisz Carol J Dye |
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| Institution: | Veterans Administration Medical Center , St. Louis |
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| Abstract: | Disorientation and confusion have been identified as significant problems for older persons newly admitted to nursing homes and other institutions. The purpose of this study was to determine which of two orientating systems might be best for helping older people become accustomed to a strange environment. Middle‐aged and elderly residents of a nursing home were dichotomized by performance on three memory tests and then were given two paired‐associate learning tasks. In one task colors and a place in the nursing home were to be associated; in the other symbols and a place in the nursing home were to be associated. The results indicated that the symbol‐place paired‐associate task was learned more rapidly than the color‐place task by both high and low memory ability groups, and that the lower memory ability group showed slower learning of the color‐place task compared to the higher memory ability group. In addition, learning was slower on both tasks when the color‐place task was the first presented. These results indicated that symbol‐place codes may be more useful than color‐place codes as orientation markers and suggested that evaluation of learning performance should include examination of order effects. |
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