This study investigated problem solving performance in Parkinson's disease (PD) individuals, PD individuals in collaboration with their caregiving spouses, as well as in healthy older adult individuals and collaborating couples. Problem solving abilities represent executive functions mediated by frontal cortex. Given frontal lobe involvement in PD, the supporting neuropsychological evidence indicates problem solving deficits in this patient population. The extent to which these individual-level deficits could be overcome (or compensated) through collaboration was explored. Two groups of elderly married couples participated in the study. The control group consisted of 20 healthy couples with neither partner having a medical diagnosis of PD. The experimental group comprised 17 couples in which the male spouse had received a diagnosis of PD from a qualified neurologist. All participants met several selection criteria: (a) aged 55 years or older, (b) relatively well-educated for their age cohort, (c) above a criterion in mental status, and (d) below a clinical criteria of depression. They performed three problem solving tasks: verbal fluency, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and the 20 Questions task. These tasks were performed twice—once individually and once collaboratively with their spouse. This within-subjects group size variable was counterbalanced so that half of the subjects were tested first as individuals and then as dyads and vice versa. The collaborative part of each testing session was videotaped. The results indicated: (a) poorer performance by the experimental couples and Parkinsonian men relative to the other participants on qualitative indices of the verbal fluency task, (b) a detrimental effect of collaboration on the speeded verbal fluency task (c) group level benefit of collaboration and inferred individual-level benefit to the Parkinsonian men for some measures on the card sorting task, (d) a benefit of collaboration for the experimental group on the 20 Questions task, (e) greater verbal input to the process of solving the 20 Questions task by the experimental females apparently to compensate for their Parkinsonian husbands, and (f) differences between the control and experimental groups in the process variables that were related to efficient questioning strategies on the 20 Questions task. Theoretical and clinical implications of this research are discussed. Limitations and possible directions for future investigation are noted. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/9758 |
| Date | 20 July 2018 |
| Creators | Fox, Diane Patricia |
| Contributors | Dixon, Roger |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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