# Wayfinding and Dementia: Some Research Findings and a New Look at Design ## Metadata title: Wayfinding and Dementia: Some Research Findings and a New Look at Design author:: [[Romedi Passini]], Constant Rainville, Nicolas Marchand, Yves Joanette cite-key:: passini1998WayfindingDementiaResearch date_published:: 1998 url:: [http://www.jstor.org/stable/43030452](http://www.jstor.org/stable/43030452) Type: Journal keywords:: [[Dementia]], [[Wayfinding]] ## Abstract The increasing interest and research effort devoted to dementia and to other disorders of the latter part of life are a reflection of the longevity of the population in developed countries. Dementia is an acquired syndrome of intellectual impairment produced by brain dysfunction. This paper presents a study exploring wayfinding abilities in dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) and suggests possible design interventions. Fourteen patients and a control group of 28 subjects, matched in terms of age, sex and education, were asked to reach a prescribed destination in a large hospital. Subjects had to verbalize all behaviors they engaged in as well as all the information underlying their actions. The verbalizations were recorded and then content analyzed. Results showed most DAT patients to be incapable of developing an overall plan to solve the wayfinding task and incapable of producing decisions involving memory or inferences. Conversely, they were better able to make decisions based on information of explicit architectural nature. Exploratory behavior was more prevalent in DAT patients compared to normal subjects. Patients performed poorly when forced to extract relevant information from graphic displays and tended to be confused by irrelevant information displays. The paper concludes with a discussion of design criteria concerning the spatial organization of settings and the circulation system as well as environmental communication. --- ## Notes -