Design of Reminiscence Therapy System for Elderly People with Dementia

Abstract

In recent years, the number of dementia patients has increased, imposing ever greater burdens on caregivers. However, no treatment has been established for dementia. Controlling its progression is a goal of treatment. Using the reminiscence method, one means of suppressing the progression of dementia, a caregiver talks with a dementia patient. However, a difficulty of the method that it is necessary to conduct a dialogue many times, which also burdens caregivers. For that reason, we propose a method to support reminiscence using a spoken dialogue system called MMDAgent in place of a caregiver. The system apparently decreases burdens on caregivers. As described herein, we specifically present the design of the proposed system.