Eun(Alice) Jung

February 3rd, 2018

Activity #1

a. Name of Activity
Charades
b. References
• Seifert, Lauren S. (2000). Charades as Cognitive Aids for Individuals with
Probable Alzheimer’s Disease. Clinical Gerontologist. 20:4, 3-14. DOI:
10.1300/J018v20n04_02
• Alzheimer’s Association(2018). 10 Early Signs and Symptoms of
Alzheimer’s. Retrieved from https://www.alz.org/10-signs-symptoms-
alzheimers- dementia.asp
c. Equipment Needed
No equipment required; but recommend to use index cards to write down the
series of concepts the participants will have to demonstrate
d. Activity Description
This activity requires a forward chaining procedure. It will require a person
leading the activity to have prepared on index cards the written concepts the
participants will have to demonstrate. The game will be competitive between two
teams(depending on the number of participants), as each team stands in a line facing
the opposite direction of the person leading the activity. The first person in the line
will be tapped on the shoulder to turn around by the leader of the activity to face
him/her. That first person will read the concept on the index card and think of a
gesture that represents that concept and tap the shoulder of the next person to turn
around and act out the gesture without talking or making sounds. The next person will
act out what they saw from the previous person and pass the gesture on and on until
they reach the last person. The last person will have the responsibility to guess the
correct concept by the observation of the gesture from the previous person. The team
to get the correct answer wins.
e. Primary interaction pattern(s) (activity analysis)
The primary interaction patterns of this activity are nonverbal communication
through physical body movements and social interaction in an intragroup that requires
cooperation to achieve a mutual goal within each team.
f. Adaptation:
The adaptation I have made of this activity is for the population of Alzheimer’s
disease. With focus to the symptoms of mental incline in problem solving, vision,
withdrawal from social activities, and difficulty completing daily tasks at home, I
wanted to adapt the game to all groups in all areas of brain development stage in
Alzheimer’s. The nonverbal interaction aspect of this game, for the most part, can be
an advantage to many people of this population as gestures can be communicated
more effectively than words, especially if the participants feel anxious or fearful of
social interaction, especially verbally, going into the game. The concepts I chose for
the index cards were geared towards daily activities such as washing the dishes,
brushing your teeth, making your bed,…) to stimulate the memory of the tasks and to
see if the participants would improve on the performance of the daily tasks. To unify
the game for all levels of cognitive functioning, it might be advised to put those who
are higher in cognitive functioning as the first and last person to challenge using their
 Eun(Alice) Jung
February 3rd, 2018
concrete as well as abstract thinking to consider what demonstration would help the
team and to decipher what the gesture is representing. And those who are less in
cognitive function can be in between them to match their difficulty. Also, a new rule
can be added by adapting the game to bring in auditory sounds for gestures that might
be difficult to understand solely through a gesture. It might also provide cues for
participants with visual impairments and the activity will provide multi-modal cues of
memory(auditory and visual).