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Name: Emily Lustig
Dissertation Proposal Meeting
Date: Wednesday, June 16, 2021
Time: 2:00pm
Location: https://bluejeans.com/9538239467
Advisor: Christopher Hertzog, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Dissertation Committee members:
Paul Verhaeghen, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Mark Wheeler, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Hsiao-Wen Liao, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Amy Rodriguez, Ph.D. (Emory University)
Title: Daily Influences on Everyday Remembering Among Dyadic Care Partners and Care Recipients with Mild Cognitive Impairment
Abstract: Multifaceted approaches to understanding daily fluctuations that affect memory and well-being among spousal dyads, where one member has diagnosed mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and the other serves as a care partner, is a relatively unexplored area of research. This study takes a novel and exploratory approach to understanding the interconnectedness of different influences on spousal dyads’ daily fluctuations in memory, caregiver burden, stress, sleep, affect, and collaborative cognition from the perspective of the care partner and the care recipient. Caregiver burden is impacted by factors such as depression, behavioral problems, and dyadic interactions. Moreover, caregiver burden may be higher among spousal caregivers of people with MCI compared to non-spousal caregivers. Previous research has also demonstrated associations among factors such as stress, sleep, and memory support mechanisms relative to memory performance in everyday life with healthy and memory impaired older adults. Using a nightly diary, twenty dyads (participants with MCI and their spousal care partners) will fill out an online form for 14 consecutive nights. The diary forms include self-report questions about daily experienced stress, sleep quality and quantity, caregiver burden, depressive affect, memory, daily activity, dyadic interaction, collaboration, and informant reports. I will investigate how daily fluctuations influence memory and stress among both members of the dyad. In particular, I anticipate higher reported daily stress, lower quality sleep, depressive affect, unbalanced collaborative cognition, and informant reports of the care recipients’ memory failures to influence the care partners’ daily caregiver burden, depressive affect, and reported memory failures within days and from one day to the next.
