Mnemic Neglect in Dementia

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Mnemic neglect in people affected with Mild Alzheimer’s disease and Dementia : replicating and extending findings from Experimental Social Psychology.

• IRAS ID

  162239

• Contact name

  Richard Cheston

• Contact email

  richard.cheston@uwe.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University of the West of England

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 5 months, 29 days

• Research summary

  An area of research called “mnemic neglect” has shown that when given information that in some way threatens our self-concept (our own view of ourselves), we tend to remember less of this information later on. If we are told exactly the same information, but asked to imagine that it applies to someone else, for instance, to someone else called “Chris”, then we tend to remember more about it. These findings suggest that the amount of information that we remember often depends on the extent to which this information contradicts our self-concept. If we change the way in which we talk to people about threatening information, then we can help them to remember more about it. This study will look at how mnemic neglect operates amongst people with dementia using research techniques which have already been used to study the phenomenon in people without dementia. If the findings are similar then we may be able to find better ways of talking to people with dementia about their illness.
  110 participants with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease, Vascular Dementia or a mixed form of these will be recruited from memory clinics from three sites in South West England to carry out a number of memory tests to examine:
  Study A- recall of neutral versus illness related words,
  Study B -recall of negative and positive behavioural statements
  Study C- recall of statements related to dementia
  Half of participants in studies B and C will be randomly allocated to imagine the statements “applies to yourself” and the other half to imagine the statements “applies to someone called Chris”.
  Study A and B will take roughly an hour to complete including consent and debrief
  Study C will take around 50 minutes to complete including consent and debrief

• REC name

  South West - Frenchay Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  14/SW/1142

• Date of REC Opinion

  18 Dec 2014

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion