Longitudinal blame and forgiveness judgments and dementia

Résumé 0

The objective of this study was to explore the change over 15 months in how older people with dementia cognitively integrated three factors (Intention, Consequence, and Apology) when making judgments of blame and forgiveness. For each moral judgment, the participants were confronted with a questionnaire comprising 12 scenarios (built from combinations of the three factors) at 3-month intervals. Eight older adults with dementia (Mage = 70.88; SD = 9.52) were included in the study. The questionnaire and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) were administered every 3 months. Several repeated-measures analyses of variance were conducted on the data from each questionnaire, and a t-test was performed on the MMSE scores at baseline and at 15 months. Despite a decrease over time in the MMSE score, the cognitive processes in information integration were stable over the 15 months. Only the intent factor was considered in both types of moral judgment. In clinical practice, these findings might be useful for preventing cognitive decline.