Out-of-home behavior and cognitive impairment in older adults: Findings of the sentra project

Markus Wettstein; Hans Werner Wahl; Noam Shoval; Frank Oswald; Elke Voss; Ulrich Seidl; Lutz Frölich; Gail Auslander; Jeremia Heinik; Ruth Landau

doi:10.1177/0733464812459373

Out-of-home behavior and cognitive impairment in older adults: Findings of the sentra project

Markus Wettstein, Hans Werner Wahl^*, Noam Shoval, Frank Oswald, Elke Voss, Ulrich Seidl, Lutz Frölich, Gail Auslander, Jeremia Heinik, Ruth Landau

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Geography

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

63 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study explores differences in the out-of-home behavior of community-dwelling older adults with different cognitive impairment. Three levels of complexity of out-of-home behavior were distinguished: (a) mostly automatized walking behavior (low complexity), (b) global out-of-home mobility (medium complexity), and (c) defined units of concrete out-of-home activities, particularly cognitively demanding activities (high complexity). A sample of 257 older adults aged 59 to 91 years (M = 72.9 years, SD = 6.4 years) included 35 persons with early-stage Alzheimer's disease (AD), 76 persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 146 cognitively healthy persons (CH). Mobility data were gathered by using a GPS tracking device as well as by questionnaire. Predicting cognitive impairment status by out-of-home behavior and a range of confounders by means of multinomial logistic regression revealed that only cognitively demanding activities showed at least a marginally significant difference between MCI and CH and were highly significant between AD and CH.

Original language	American English
Pages (from-to)	3-25
Number of pages	23
Journal	Journal of Applied Gerontology
Volume	34
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0733464812459373
State	Published - 8 Feb 2015

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The Study “The Use of Advanced Tracking Technologies for the Analysis of Mobility in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Cognitive Diseases” (abbreviated as Senior Tracking/SenTra) was supported by the German Research Foundation between 2008 and 2011, based on a grant to Hans-Werner Wahl (WA809/11-1). We would like to thank our geography partners in Germany—in particular, Dr. Tim Freytag—for their valuable support regarding the GPS/GIS data collection. Heike Hercher has provided the expert rating for distinguishing cognitively demanding activities in her Master’s thesis in Psychology. Additionally, we would like to thank Katharina Hager, Heike Hercher, Hannah Schmidt-Friderichs, and Johanna Martinez-Slebi for great support in collecting and processing the data of the project. We are also very thankful to the older adults who have participated in the study.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2012 The Author(s).

Keywords

Alzheimer's disease
GPS tracking technology
mild cognitive impairment
old age
out-of-home behavior

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10.1177/0733464812459373

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title = "Out-of-home behavior and cognitive impairment in older adults: Findings of the sentra project",

abstract = "This study explores differences in the out-of-home behavior of community-dwelling older adults with different cognitive impairment. Three levels of complexity of out-of-home behavior were distinguished: (a) mostly automatized walking behavior (low complexity), (b) global out-of-home mobility (medium complexity), and (c) defined units of concrete out-of-home activities, particularly cognitively demanding activities (high complexity). A sample of 257 older adults aged 59 to 91 years (M = 72.9 years, SD = 6.4 years) included 35 persons with early-stage Alzheimer's disease (AD), 76 persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 146 cognitively healthy persons (CH). Mobility data were gathered by using a GPS tracking device as well as by questionnaire. Predicting cognitive impairment status by out-of-home behavior and a range of confounders by means of multinomial logistic regression revealed that only cognitively demanding activities showed at least a marginally significant difference between MCI and CH and were highly significant between AD and CH.",

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author = "Markus Wettstein and Wahl, {Hans Werner} and Noam Shoval and Frank Oswald and Elke Voss and Ulrich Seidl and Lutz Fr{\"o}lich and Gail Auslander and Jeremia Heinik and Ruth Landau",

note = "Funding Information: The Study “The Use of Advanced Tracking Technologies for the Analysis of Mobility in Alzheimer{\textquoteright}s Disease and Related Cognitive Diseases” (abbreviated as Senior Tracking/SenTra) was supported by the German Research Foundation between 2008 and 2011, based on a grant to Hans-Werner Wahl (WA809/11-1). We would like to thank our geography partners in Germany—in particular, Dr. Tim Freytag—for their valuable support regarding the GPS/GIS data collection. Heike Hercher has provided the expert rating for distinguishing cognitively demanding activities in her Master{\textquoteright}s thesis in Psychology. Additionally, we would like to thank Katharina Hager, Heike Hercher, Hannah Schmidt-Friderichs, and Johanna Martinez-Slebi for great support in collecting and processing the data of the project. We are also very thankful to the older adults who have participated in the study. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2012 The Author(s).",

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Out-of-home behavior and cognitive impairment in older adults: Findings of the sentra project

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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