Learning and knowing technology as lived experience in people with Alzheimer's disease: a phenomenological study

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Most research on learning in the field of dementia has studied teaching approaches, while little is known about learning as experienced and enacted by the people with dementia. The aim was to explore the lived experience of learning and maintaining knowledge related to technology among people with mild to moderate stage dementia.

Method: Seven persons with dementia were interviewed in-depth, and data were analyzed with a phenomenological approach.

Results: The participants positioned themselves on a continuum from ‘Updating and expanding is not for me’ to ‘Updating and expanding is really for me’. They used different ways of learning in their everyday life - relying on one's habituated repertoire of actions, on other people or on technology itself, or belonging to a learning context.

Conclusions: We have much to gain from better understanding of how people with dementia strive to learn and maintain their skills and knowledge related to technology. This is particularly important as they seem to use other approaches than those employed in current teaching methods. The necessity of learning stands out particularly when it comes to the interaction with the current multitude and ever-changing designs of technologies, including assistive technologies developed specifically to support people with dementia.

KEYWORDS:

• Dementia
• everyday life activities
• problem solving
• situated learning

Acknowledgments

We thank the participants for sharing their lived experiences of learning technology with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Swedish Research Council [grant number 521-2013-3488]; American Alzheimer's Association under the Everyday Technologies for Alzheimer's Care program [grant number 09-133177]; Strategic Research Programme in Care Sciences (SFO-V) at Karolinska Institutet [grant number FOR4-680/2013]; Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE) [grant number 2013-2104].