Research Symposium

BIO

My name is Amelia Bush and I am currently a senior studying psychology at FSU. Since my high school years, I have loved the topic of psychology, and I wanted to pursue it further in college. My goal in life is to make an impact in the field of psychology and to help inform more people about the increasingly growing concern of mental health. Currently, the research I am involved in studies diseases such as Vascular Dementia. In the future, I hope to further my horizons and learn more about dementia, and to eventually research Alzheimer's disease.

Spatial Navigation Skills in Vascular Dementia- A Meta Analysis

Abstract

Vascular Dementia is a serious disease linked to vascular injury. One of the most common early indicators of vascular dementia (VaD), is spatial disorientation. VaD patients may often find themselves confused or disoriented when navigating their surroundings. The study of spatial navigation could potentially provide clarity on cognitive decline linked to VaD. This project is a meta-analysis that will investigate the discrepancies in spatial navigation test performance between a healthy older adult population and a VaD population. While this study has not yet been completed, there will eventually be a measure of the effect size using the standardized mean difference (Hedge’s g). The analysis will examine characteristics such as the publication year, country of study, age, gender, education level, test administration method (real-world, virtual reality), type of measure (time, accuracy), and additional spatial tasks associated with the primary spatial navigation test. It has been hypothesized that the analysis will show a significant difference between the spatial navigation skills of healthy older adults and those with VaD.

Keywords: Vascular Dementia, Spatial Navigation, Meta-Analysis