A Lego Robot Programming Intervention for Enhancing Older Adult Cognitive Health

Summary

The population in Taiwan is rapidly aging with an increasing proportion of older persons who experience cognitive difficulties but are otherwise physically healthy. As such there is a critical and urgent need for effective interventions to enhance older adult cognitive health. This present sub-project is part of the larger integrated project that will address this need by conducting cognitive training interventions on community older adults using the National Taiwan Science Education Center (NTSEC) as the public engagement window and collecting research behavioral and neurophysiological data to empirically and objectively examine intervention efficacies. In this sub-project, the investigators implement a clinical trial to evaluate an open-ended, flexible cognitive training intervention in middle to older adults aged 50 yrs or above using a 12-week Lego Robot Programming (Lego RP) protocol developed in the investigators' lab at the Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University. The Lego RP training requires participants to generate and update abstract mental hypotheses of the effect of program codes on the physical actions of a robot based on how the robot behaves. Such mental processing is thought to drive flexible coordination between neural processes in the brain and benefit a broad range of cognitive abilities in older adults. The investigators target to obtain pre- and post-intervention behavioral and neurophysiological data (including brain imaging indicators) in 40 experimental participants, 40 active control participants, and 40 passive control participants over a period of 3 years.

Conditions

• Cognitive Inferential Ability

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Lego Robot Programming Active Challenges

Participants will adapt their own Lego robot programs to achieve specific task goals.

BEHAVIORAL

Lego Robot Programming Procedural Methods

Participating will undergo Lego robot programming training that engages them to follow fixed programming coding steps.

BEHAVIORAL

Board Games

Participants will play board games with each other.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• National Taiwan University

  collaborator OTHER

• National Taiwan Science Education Center

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• National Taiwan University Hospital

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Joshua OS Goh, Ph. D. · National Taiwan University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

TRIPLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-09-01

Primary Completion

2025-03-20

Completion

2025-03-20

Countries

• Taiwan

Study Locations