A Study on Educational Effect of Cognitive Training Program

Abstract

The prevalence of dementia in Korea has been consistently high and the number of patients is estimated to be over three millions by 2050. The dementia is a disease that destroys the mental, physical, and social functions and place a burden on the patients and their families, requiring social responsibility for the care of the elderly. Therefore, with the aim of preventing dementia and delaying the progression, human resources who provide cognitive improvement and cognitive rehabilitation services to patients should be fostered. This is an one-group pre- and post-test pre-experimental design study intended to verify the effectiveness of cognitive training program on knowledge of dementia, dementia attitude and knowledge of cognitive activity, performance ability. This education was provided for 52 subjects of the cognitive game activity instructor course at L citizen’s university from August 5, to October 9, 2021. This program was given one session in a week (ten sessions in total). As a result, dementia attitude (DAS: Dementia Attitudes Scale) was significant statistically with total score (t=-4.33, p<.001), stabilization score (t=-3.62, p=.001), and knowledge score (t=-3.66, p=.001). And knowledge of cognitive activity score was significant statistically (t=-4.93, p<.001). Performance ability was not significant statistically, (t=-1.37, p=.175), but the mean score increased slightly (pretest M±SD=3.73±0.37) (posttest M±SD=3.79±0.29). Therefore, cognitive training program appeared as a useful program for the effective activity of cognitive training program leader taking care of the elderly with dementia. But the educational contents are needed to improve the knowledge of dementia and ability to performance the program when developing a program and to generalize this, it is suggested that the study should be repeated by securing the number of subjects.