Design and Development of an Automated Coimagination Support System

TL;DR

This paper presents the initial design of an automated coimagination support system aimed at aiding cognitive functions in elderly, demonstrating preliminary success with both healthy and elderly users via voice interface.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel automated system for coimagination support, enhancing ease of use and configurability for elderly and healthy participants, with initial positive testing results.

Findings

Elderly participants required minimal assistance to operate the system.

Healthy participants had longer speaking and Q&A rounds.

System successfully handled different configurations.

Abstract

Coimagination method is a novel approach to support interactive communication for activating three (3) cognitive functions: episodic memory, division of attention, and planning. These cognitive functions are known to decline at an early stage of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In previous studies about the coimagination method, experimenters tested different settings in different care institutions. Out of these experiments, various measures were introduced, analyzed, and presented. However, ease of changing configuration based on participants, and a quick assessment of captured data remained challenging. Also, several observers and measurers are needed to conduct the coimagination method. In this paper, we propose the initial design and development of an automated coimagination support system that can handle such challenges. We aim to have an automated coimagination support system that can be used easily either by healthy participants or elderly participants via a natural voice interface. In this paper, our focus is to measure how well our proposed features work with elderly participants. Preliminary experiments were conducted with healthy participants, and notably, with actual elder participants. Healthy participants experienced longer speaking round and question-and-answer round than with elderly participants; while, the latter had preparation time before the speaking round. In these preliminary experiments, our initial system showed the capability to handle different configurations. Healthy participants have operated the system using voice, while elderly participants managed to use the system with minimal assistance.