Design and Development of an Automated Coimagination Support System
This work addresses the need for easier and automated cognitive support systems for elderly individuals with mild cognitive impairment, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing coimagination methods.
The paper tackled the challenge of automating the coimagination method for cognitive support by designing a system that handles different configurations and reduces the need for multiple observers, with preliminary experiments showing it can be operated via voice by healthy participants and with minimal assistance by elderly participants.
Coimagination method is a novel approach to support interactive communication for activating three (3) cognitive functions: episodic memory, division of attention, and planning. These cognitive functions are known to decline at an early stage of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In previous studies about the coimagination method, experimenters tested different settings in different care institutions. Out of these experiments, various measures were introduced, analyzed, and presented. However, ease of changing configuration based on participants, and a quick assessment of captured data remained challenging. Also, several observers and measurers are needed to conduct the coimagination method. In this paper, we propose the initial design and development of an automated coimagination support system that can handle such challenges. We aim to have an automated coimagination support system that can be used easily either by healthy participants or elderly participants via a natural voice interface. In this paper, our focus is to measure how well our proposed features work with elderly participants. Preliminary experiments were conducted with healthy participants, and notably, with actual elder participants. Healthy participants experienced longer speaking round and question-and-answer round than with elderly participants; while, the latter had preparation time before the speaking round. In these preliminary experiments, our initial system showed the capability to handle different configurations. Healthy participants have operated the system using voice, while elderly participants managed to use the system with minimal assistance.