Mild cognitive impairment, mutuality, and collaborative cognition among older adult relationships
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Cabrera, Elena
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Abstract
Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a diagnosis given to a handful of older adults which affects one’s cognitive ability. With this, those in romantic relationships tend to form a
caregiving/receiving dynamic. This study evaluated participants part of such dyads by collecting daily diaries that included self-reports of collaborative cognition as well as a mutuality scale. Collaborative cognition (CC) refers to a shared problem solving which these couples may utilize in their everyday lives. This mix-methods study had a total of 54 participants (N=54) of which half were the individual diagnosed with MCI (i.e., the care recipient; CR) and the other half were their partners (i.e., the care partner, CP). The results indicated that there was no significant correlation between collaborative cognition and the average mutuality scores across couples. Furthermore, the highest mutuality days (HMDs) and lowest mutuality days (LMDs) were qualitatively coded in order to investigate patterns among the types of collaborative cognition. These were further broken down into the individual reports from the CPs compared to the CRs. One of the big takeaways included feelings of burden by the CP indicated by greater LMDs when CCs in which they hold more responsibility for the CR are reported. However, the CP also does more for the CR on the HMDs. This indicates that despite the caregiver burden felt, they do not necessarily have negative feelings/experiences with their CR. Additionally, HMDs typically consisted of more enjoyable task-/event-filled days which could suggest that. Lastly, it seems that across the HMDs and LMDs, there seems to be higher agreement among the CPs compared to the CRs, indicating group differences among the two types of partners. Such findings can be significant for applied research on interventions and products for older adults living with MCI and relationship dynamics.
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Undergraduate Research Option Thesis