Week 5: Coloring Exercise

To celebrate the coming of Spring, I prepared a coloring activity with floral and natural designs that allows the patients to relax while improving their color recognition and hand-eye coordination skills.

Most of the participants were able to color within the lines and use appropriate hues for corresponding objects. However, some weren’t able to see the difference between the flowers and the leaves and use the common colors to fill in the shapes. Sala et al. concluded through their Color-to-figure Matching Test that some patients with Alzheimer’s disease may have difficulty retrieving the color for common objects. The paper states that central color disturbance range from “acquired chromatopsia (the loss of color vision)… to the more subtle impairments such as color aphasia and color agnosia (the inability to name a color)”.

Here is an example of a participant who couldn’t identify the appropriate color for flowers:

Here are some of the other drawings:

The participants really enjoyed this activity, since most of them were adept at coloring. Next time, I am planning to do a project that is Easter related. Thank you for reading my post and that's it for this week!