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-- Kitajima, Kumada, Akamatsu, Ogi, & Yamazaki (2005)Kitajima, M., Kumada, T., Akamatsu, M., Ogi, H., & Yamazaki, H. (2005). Effect of Cognitive Ability Deficits on Elderly Passengers' Mobility at Railway Stations - Focusing on Attention, Working Memory, and Planning The 5th International Conference of The International Society for Gerontechnology, XXX-XXX.
Effect of Cognitive Ability Deficits on Elderly Passengers' Mobility at Railway Stations - Focusing on Attention, Working Memory, and PlanningThe purpose of this research is to understand how a deficit in cognitive functions affects elderly passengers' behavior at railway stations. The cognitive functions we focus on include attention, working memory, and planning, which we have found to decrease independently with aging. We selected three railway stations (Akihabara, Sugamo, and Ohmiya) and assigned four participants at each station with different characteristics in terms of the above-mentioned cognitive functions; one had no problem in the three cognitive functions, whereas each of the other three had a different inferior cognitive function. At the railway stations, the participants were instructed to carry out a main mobility task, such as transferring from line A to line B, while performing two or three subtasks such as finding public telephone, restroom, or elevator. We recorded the participants' behavior using a wireless microphone and two video camera systems, a small wireless pinhole CMOS camera mounted on the participants' hats for recording their visual view and a CCD camera for recording the whole back view. After each task, the participants were conducted into a room and interviewed for their background knowledge, explanation of their behavior, etc. while reviewing the recorded videos. The results showed that three of the twelve participants with inferior planning function consistently had serious problems in performing the tasks. This indicates that special considerations are needed to support these people.
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