The purpose of the quantitative study is to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational intervention by comparing the improvement in knowledge and attitudes of older adult and caregiver participants in South Carolina. Orangeburg County, a rural area in South Carolina, ranks 8th in the nation for Alzheimer's disease prevalence, according to…

Worldwide, 50 million people live with dementia. There is a failure to identify best practices for teaching students to identify the common features of dementia and to determine effective ways to prevent behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental study was to examine whether exposure to a…

Some scientists believe that speaking a second language could confer lasting cognitive advantages in aging and stave off the onset of dementia (Bialystok et al., 2007; Craik et al., 2010; Abutalebi & Rietbergen, 2014; Grant et al., 2014; Woumans et al., 2015; Klein et al., 2016; Abutalebi & Green, 2016; Smirnov et al., 2019). However, this…

The purpose of this study was to examine the role and relationship of the practice of Christian beliefs and resilience in the context of dementia patient caregivers' lives. The guiding question was "What is the relational nature of the practice of Christian beliefs and resilience in the lived experiences of caregivers of dementia…

The population of distance caregivers of people with dementia/Alzheimer's disease has not been extensively researched. This research study focused on exploring the lived experience of people caring for someone with dementia/Alzheimer's disease from a distance (defined as 2 or more hours away) to help shed light on this caregiving population. Ten…

Excessive production of pro-inflammatory mediators by activated brain microglia plays an important role in abnormal neuronal function and cognitive deficits. Studies have shown that the intake of flavonoids is inversely related to cognitive decline and dementia in people 65 years of age or older. Luteolin, a flavonoid found in high concentrations…

Talking with friend about personal photographs is a recognizable as an activity in which people participate in the modern world. This dissertation presents three studies examining the locally initial person reference formulations used to refer to people in the photographs in such an activity. The first study shows how the speakers narrating the…