Stimulating people with dementia to reminisce using personal and generic photographs

Reminiscing is a positive pastime for people with dementia but little is known about selecting materials to prompt reminiscing, particularly whether personal items are more useful than generic ones. This paper reports two small studies, the first using personal stimuli (family photographs) and the second generic photographs of annual events to examine their relative effectiveness as reminiscence prompts for people with dementia. Story telling and the types of information people with dementia produced in response to the photographs are examined. In response to family photographs, people with dementia told very few stories and produced quite limited information. When shown generic photographs, people with dementia produced quite detailed and emotional stories of personal significance. The findings suggest that personal items perform as a memory test for labels and descriptions of family events whereas generic items spark off different recollections in different people, thereby encouraging the sharing of stories and social reminiscing.