Our findings show that caregiver stigma increases caregiver burden in the case of Alzheimer's disease. Using this knowledge, psychosocial interventions should target stigmatic beliefs in order to reduce caregiver burden.

This study's aims were (a) to examine kinematically the handwriting process of persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), compared with those with mild Alzheimer's disease and healthy controls; (b) to assess the importance of these measures for the differentiation of the groups; and (c) to assess characteristics of the handwriting process across different functional tasks. Thirty-one persons with MCI, 22 with mild Alzheimer's disease, and 41 healthy controls performed functional tasks while using a computerized system. We found significant differences between the groups in almost all measures, with the MCI group assuming a position between the other groups. Temporal measures were higher and pressure was lower in more cognitively deteriorated groups. Information gathered about kinematic measures, together with cognitive functioning, allowed us to classify 69% to 72% of the participants correctly, although the classification for the MCI group was relatively poor.

This study explores differences in the out-of-home behavior of community-dwelling older adults with different cognitive impairment. Three levels of complexity of out-of-home behavior were distinguished: (a) mostly automatized walking behavior (low complexity), (b) global out-of-home mobility (medium complexity), and (c) defined units of concrete out-of-home activities, particularly cognitively demanding activities (high complexity). A sample of 257 older adults aged 59 to 91 years (M = 72.9 years, SD = 6.4 years) included 35 persons with early-stage Alzheimer's disease (AD), 76 persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 146 cognitively healthy persons (CH). Mobility data were gathered by using a GPS tracking device as well as by questionnaire. Predicting cognitive impairment status by out-of-home behavior and a range of confounders by means of multinomial logistic regression revealed that only cognitively demanding activities showed at least a marginally significant difference between MCI and CH and were highly significant between AD and CH.