Ventriloquist doll therapy for people with dementia

Do you still know what Batibot is?

If you don’t, then perhaps I’m really getting old. It’s actually a children’s show I really liked to watch way way way back to the good old days when I had so much free time and all I was worrying about was what show to watch. Unlike now that I can barely watch TV because of all the things I need to do (e.g. write a blog), but I still don’t feel pretty bad especially when one of my friends doesn’t even know who Kuya Kim is (ehem, Micah :)).

Anyway, Batibot is like Sesame Street which uses mascots and puppets as characters to create stories for children. I can still remember how fascinated and curious I was on how these characters could speak like humans. It was only when I was a little older when I realized that they were not really speaking on their own, but they were actually being dubbed and/or manipulated and I just tend to perceive them as the one directly speaking.

Anyway, here's a Jessica Soho's (2007) feature of Batibot: (sorry, I can't find a better resolution)

Apparently, this is what we call a visual capture or ventriloquism effect wherein we perceive sounds to be coming from the apparent visual source, even if it actually originates from another location (Goldstein, 2010). This is what commonly occurs on acts of stagecraft, in which a person changes his/her voice to make a puppet seem alive.

I actually found a very interesting study by Baldwin (2012), on how ventriloquist dolls are being used nowadays to interact with people with dementia. In his experiment, he exposed the patients into three treatments: interacting with staff members (control group), listening to music, and engaging with the doll. They scored the patients with their level of interaction and interest on the three conditions by putting observers on each conducted session.       

The experiment showed a 28 percent increase in the level of engagement when the doll was used compared to the other types of interaction. This shows how the ventriloquist doll helped residents, especially those withdrawn or depressed, open up their feelings. They also observed how those who rarely communicated with their family or care staff, suddenly preferred engaging with the doll than with people.

Ventriloquist doll used for dementia therapy

This led them to conclude on how patients considered the doll as a surrogate, non-threatening, and light-hearted entity that made communication with it easier and freer. Another reason is how engaging with the ventriloquist doll also possessed what Cooren (2012) calls as “one of the key elements of communication, that is, our capacity to make other beings say or do things while we speak, write, or, more generally, conduct ourselves”.

The use of dolls in treating patients with dementia has actually been started by Mackenzie et al (2006). In their experiment, dolls were put on visible areas (e.g. tables) where patients can easily locate and engage with them. They observed a largely positive effect on the patients, and they saw how the residents became “less agitated, more engaged and more likely to communicate with staff”.

This is really interesting for me, since the ventriloquist dolls and puppets that I thought as just part of my childhood, are now actually being used as a therapy for dementia. Also, this again highlights how our senses do not work in isolation, but how different modalities work together, like our audio-visual-tactile senses as in the case of doll ventriloquism. It is amazing how memory can falter, like in the case of patients with dementia, but our ability to sense and perceive stimulus simultaneously is still automatic, and how it can still affect one’s level of interaction and disclosure.

Though there are criticisms that these ventriloquist dolls face infantilisation or the danger of treating old age as that of a second childhood (Mackenzie et al., 2012), I just think that recognizing it as a potential form of therapy still has large implications and pioneering approaches on dealing with people with neurodegenerative disease.

There are still more researches to be done on this field but as for me, I guess I need to buy a Pong Pagong stuff toy and practice ventriloquism in the near future.

Well, if you really don’t know who Pong Pagong is, then here is just a video of one of my most favorite ventriloquists, Paul Zerdin:

References:

Baldwin, J. (2012). How ventriloquism is helping people to speak for themselves. Australian Journal of Dementia Care, 1(1), 16-17. Retrieved from http://www.cecd-society.org/PDF/2012-AJDC_issue_1.pdf#page=16

Cooren, F. (2012). Communication Theory at the Center: Ventriloquism and the Communicative Constitution of Reality. Journal of Communication, 62(1), 1-20. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01622.x/full

Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.

Mackenzie, L., James, I., Morse, R., Mukaetova-Ladinska, E., Reichelt, K. (2006). A pilot study on the use of dolls for people with dementia. Age and Ageing, 35(4) 441-44.

Photo and Video Citations:

Untitled image of ventriloquist doll [online image]. Retrieved September 23, 2012, from http://progress-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/this-doll-can-make-a-difference/

Batibot Redux: Original Cast Reunion [video file]. Retrieved September 23, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxDhvAlnkHU&feature=related

Paul Zerdin and Sam [video file]. Retrieved September 23, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujDLNG9ckFo&feature=related