Exploring Spared Capacity in Persons With Dementia: What WiiTM Can Learn

This study was designed to probe the capacity of persons with dementia to learn motor tasks. The activity selected was the Nintendo WiiTM bowling game. The experimenters followed three case studies throughout a 9-week training session, with a 5–6 month follow-up retention test. The participants had a dementia diagnosis, with disease duration ranging from 2 to 5 years. All participants demonstrated improvement in bowling scores and memory for procedural components of game participation that persisted up to 6 months. These results support spared motor learning capacity in dementia, supporting a need for further investigation of activity enhanced therapy.