Influence of Building Materials with Directional Textures on the Visual Perceptions of Elderly with Alzheimer’s Disease

SummaryBackgroundVisual hallucinations are caused when complex texture images interfere with the visual transmission pathway of an individual. Overstimulation of the senses should be avoided, in order to prevent people with dementia from having hallucinations. This study attempted to find the change in visual perceptions of the elderly with Alzheimer’s disease in relation to the textures of building materials, in order to determine what kind of texture might have the potential to cause the demented elderly to have hallucinations.MethodsA total of 10 elderly people with mild dementia from Chai-Li senior care center participated in this experiment. Simulation of visual perception was made using a highly sensitive LCD projector that showed pictures of building materials on a screen. A clock drawing test was applied to assess the changes in the participants’ visual perceptions between prior to and after the simulation.ResultsVisual perception in the demented elderly was more influenced by textures with lines of different widths or different ranges, and textures of crossed lines, than by textures with lines of the same width and range. The participants’ descriptions in terms of the visual images that they saw actually did not exist while they looked at the textures.ConclusionData about these building materials should be made available for the reference of caregivers and building managers, in order to prevent the demented elderly from having behavior problems due to environmental design. Lastly, further study is required to confirm if the building materials’ influence on visual perceptions in the demented elderly correlates to the variables of age, sex, and severity of disease.