ABSTRACT
Introduction: Nowadays, cognitive and physical training tend to be promising aspects of the contemporary intervention strategies followed by the scientists to wards the confron-tation of dementia.
Materials and Methods: In the context of the Long Lasting Memories (LLM) project funded by the European Commission, the approach of combining physical and cogni-tive training was studied as an approach focusing to the continuous activation of mind and body in an attempt to avoid transition to dementia or further progression of the disease in its early stages. During the trial period the seniors were present at the trial site five days per week and the threshold for a successful intervention was a total of 24 training sessions. The group of seniors performing the intervention at the same geo-location at the same time varied from 1 to 12 users per group, due to the capacity of LLM systems (PC) and the seniors’ preferences. The total number of the groups was 46 during the whole trial period.
Results: During the intervention, some elderly were dropped out of the intervention after a number of sessions. The results show that a correlation between the number of the drop out participants during the intervention and the number of participants per intervention group exists. The more participants per group the fewer drop outs. The results are very encouraging in the case of groups made up of more than 7 people where the percentage of people who did not complete the program is below 15%.
Conclusion: Since each intervention group occurs in the same physical location and the elderly interact with each other (either in a competitive or a collaborative manner during intervention games) each group is considered as a social network. The social network plays significant role in the empowerment of the elderly to adhere to a de-manding training program such as the one introduced in the LLM project. Addition-ally, according to the results, when a group consists of more than 7 participants, the likelihood for a drop out falls below 15%.
Keywords: elderly, affective computing, serious games, social network, physical, cognitive, intervention
