Reminiscence Therapy in Virtual Reality: A Virtual Reality Application with Local Content to Help Mild Dementia

Abstract

Dementia poses a serious threat to the way of life of the elderly and impacts their daily activities. We have therefore developed an interdisciplinary project applying virtual reality (VR) and the reminiscence therapy approach to cope with mild dementia, using the HTC Vive VR system and the Leap Motion sensor software system. The scene of our application is constructed with reference to a Hong Kong public housing flat in the 1970s, and two different modes are available, namely the cognitive assessment mode and explorer mode. This project enables the occupational therapy students to develop a good understanding of the content creation process in virtual reality, including virtual asset, movement and interaction design, which constitute to the effective delivery of therapy for people with dementia.

Compared to paper-and-pencil tests, VR provides a more ecologically valid testing and training scenario. With VR, total control and high consistency of stimulus delivery to enhance the reliability of results can be easily achieved. It also provides several benefits for occupational therapy students. First, the students will not be negatively affected by the complicated physical environment. Second, all the actions in VR can be recorded for further analysis. Third, solid evidence is obtained instead of relying on self-evaluation paper-and-pencil assessments. This Article describes the development and implementation of a VR application in rehabilitation. It illustrates the design and development flow, and provides a solution to evaluate the quality of interdisciplinary work in engineering and health science.