ArticleFrontiers in psychology2014
Can Doll therapy preserve or promote attachment in people with cognitive, behavioral, and emotional problems? A pilot study in institutionalized patients with dementia.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT03224143 (Doll Therapy Efficacy for People With Dementia Living in Nursing Homes), which is not on this map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Doll Therapy Efficacy for People With Dementia Living in Nursing Homes: a Randomized Single-blind Controlled Trial
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- The doll therapy as a first line treatment for behavioral and psychologic symptoms of dementia in nursing homes residents: a randomized, controlled study.BMC geriatrics · 2021Trial
- Comparison of the efficacy of gesture-verbal treatment and doll therapy for managing neuropsychiatric symptoms in older patients with dementia.International journal of geriatric psychiatry · 2019Trial
- Enhancing theory of mind in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia with transcranial direct current stimulation.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2018Trial
- Emotionally Personalized Doll Therapy for Behavioral Symptoms in an 88-Year-Old Woman With Alzheimer's Disease: A Case Report.Clinical case reports · 2026Article
- The Implementation of Infant Anoesis and Adult Autonoesis in the Retrogenesis and Staging System of the Neurocognitive Disorders: A Proposal for a Multidimensional Person-Centered Model.Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- The ethics of pet robots in dementia care settings: Care professionals' and organisational leaders' ethical intuitions.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Doll Therapy Intervention Reduces Challenging Behaviours of Women with Dementia Living in Nursing Homes: Results from a Randomized Single-Blind Controlled Trial.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Guys and dolls: Two case reports of spontaneous interactions with dolls in male veterans with dementia.Psychological services · 2022Article
- Managing feeding needs in advanced dementia: perspectives from ethics of care and ubuntu philosophy.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2022Article
- Effect of Doll Therapy in Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia: A Systematic Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Doctor Hope; Calming and Comforting Loneliness in Parkinson's Disease.Clinical parkinsonism & related disorders · 2022Article
- A Minimal Design of a Human Infant Presence: A Case Study Toward Interactive Doll Therapy for Older Adults With Dementia.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Doll therapy is a non-pharmacological intervention aimed at reducing behavioral and psychological disorders in institutionalized patients with dementia. This therapy as a care tool has been integrated into the context of long-term care institutions, in which the need to find solutions to cognitive, behavioral and emotional problems showed by people with dementia meets the primary objective of developing good care practices focusing on patients and their needs. In the present work we adopt the Bowlby's theory of attachment to investigate the effectiveness of Doll therapy. The hypothesis that we here propose is that the emotional experience of the person with dementia during Doll therapy activates caregiving and exploration systems together with the attachment one. To test this hypothesis we compared institutionalized patients with dementia undergoing Doll therapy with a control group and assessed measures of the relational dimension with the environment, such as gaze direction, behaviors of exploration, and behaviors of caregiving. We used an experimental protocol consisting of 10 non-consecutive sessions structured with the goal of recreating a situation of (1) separation from a known figure and (2) interaction with the environment in order to partially recreate the prototypical phases of the "Strange situation." All sessions were videotaped and analyzed through an observational grid. Results support the effectiveness of Doll therapy in promoting and maintaining the affective-relational dimension of attachment-caregiving and the attentive dimension of exploration in patients with advanced stage of dementia. Thus, our results suggest that the use of Doll therapy promotes clinically significant improvements in the ability to relate with the surrounding world. This may be important for managing and caring for patients with dementia in institutionalized context.
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