A Social Engaging Restorative Virtual Environment (SERVE) Volunteer Intervention to Support Social Engagement and Well-Being in Older Adults with Cognitive Impairment

Project Summary With increasing age comes age-associated declines in cognitive and everyday functioning, a greater propensity for illness, and the onset of disorders such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (ADRD). People with MCI are at a high risk for developing dementia and thus interventions are needed to improve or maintain current levels of function or delay further cognitive decline, as well as to improve the quality of life among those with MCI. VR-based approaches are portable, adaptable, and cost-effective, which offers enhanced access compared to outpatient treatments. In addition to demonstrating efficacy, another crucial goal of intervention research is developing an understanding of “how and why” interventions work. Insufficient understanding of the underlying principles or the mechanisms of action of interventions impedes implementation. As such, the goal of the proposed work is to generate and test a VR- based intervention to improve the wellbeing and quality of life of older adults with MCI while simultaneously untangling the intervention’s hypothesized mechanisms of action and moderators of intervention success. This project is highly innovative as it is using a VR-based delivery method and harnesses the human capital of older individuals seeking volunteer experiences to engage in meaningful social and cognitive engagement with other older adults with MCI as intervention partners. The inclusion of volunteers will also provide meaningful experiences for the volunteers and enhance the scalability of the intervention. The activities of this Stage I behavioral intervention project will include the generation of a new VR intervention (through the refinement of VR modules that we have already developed along with the creation of new modules), the development of instructional materials to train community interventionists (older adult volunteers), and the preliminary testing of intervention efficacy. The intervention development will apply a user-centered iterative design approach to generate and evaluate the Social Engaging Restorative Virtual Environment (SERVE), which will provide older adults with MCI an opportunity for social interaction through a variety of social and cognitively engaging collaborative activities within their own homes. The intervention will pair MCI individuals with non-impaired older adult volunteers. MCI participants and volunteers will interact remotely within a shared virtual space and productively engage and collaborate in shared activities. We hypothesize, based on empirical research and theoretical models of aging, that SERVE will increase perceived social support among the older adult participants with MCI, and that increases in perceived social support will reduce loneliness, improve wellbeing, and enhance quality of life. Our pilot data and a growing body of research literature suggest that perceived spatial presence within the VR environment will be an important moderator of intervention success.