An Arts Intervention for Older Adults Living in Subsidized Retirement Homes

ABSTRACT

A theatrically based intervention was given to 122 older adults who took lessons twice a week for 4 weeks. The training consisted of multi-modal activities (cognitive–affective–physiological) typically employed in college acting classes. Comparison groups consisted of no-treatment controls and participants instructed in a different performing art, singing. Assessment of effectiveness was performed using a battery of 11 cognitive/affective test measures that included word recall, prose comprehension/recall, word generation, digit-span ability, and problem-solving. It was found that the acting group improved significantly from pretest to posttest over both other groups. Digit-span was the only measure that failed to improve. The gains were achieved despite the fact that no aspects of the intervention supplied specific training or practice on the test measures. Previous versions of the intervention with community-dwelling adults had produced similar findings but the current participants were older, less well-educated, and lived in subsidized, primarily low-income, retirement homes.

Keywords:

• Intervention
• Cognitive training
• Stimulating activities
• Novel activities
• Performing arts

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This work was supported by Grant 1 R15 AG026306-01 from the National Institute on Aging. We are indebted to Aaron Johnson for teaching the voice course and to the following students who assisted in the collection of data for this project: John Comprado, Kristin Enger, Jennifer Forster, Janette Krzyzewski, Shaira Rock, Sarah Rouleau, Shraddha Mahadevia, and Karolina Wanielista. We also thank Robert Wilson, Graham Staines, Timothy Johnson and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Portions of this research were presented at the Joint Conference of the American Society on Aging and the National Council on Aging, Chicago, IL, USA, March, 2007.

Notes

¹The singing group was also assigned homework. The participants were asked to listen to singers on radio, CDs, or TV, and observe their breath control, interpretation and other elements taught in class.