Individual reminiscence programme using the native language for bilingual elderly persons with dementia

Abstract

  Our study aimed to examine the possibility of communication under which we could better understand bilingual elderly persons with dementia by attempting reminiscence as an activity using the native language. We conducted our conversations with 4 bilingual residents of a special nursing home for the elderly geared towards Korean residents of Japan. The subjects were all female, with an average age of 88 years old, and were experiencing moderate or severe dementia. We performed a comparative analysis of both their native language and Japanese conversations from the perspective of whether or not there were any differences in the details of the conversations or emotional responses during the conversations. We observed that even if an elderly person has severe dementia, there is some natural Code-Switching (CS) taking place if they are a bilingual speaker. In other words, it became clear that there was a latent remnant ability in the subjects to use the language of their native country based on the learning and experiences they had accumulated in the past. Also, when we utilized the ERiC scale to assess emotional response, we found that there was more expression of positive emotion in the speakers when they used their native language as opposed to when they used Japanese. Based on the above findings, we think that our utilization of reminiscence in native language conversations with bilingual elderly dementia persons (in this case, on first-generation Korean residents of Japan) can be considered as one effective method of offering psychological support.