Tell-tale tea errors that may point to dementia

IF you’re prone to making small errors while carrying out everyday tasks such as making a cup of tea, you may be showing early signs of dementia, researchers claim.

Making ‘micro errors’ like checking several times whether the teabag is in the cup or going to the fridge when the milk is already out show the brain’s processing ability is fading.

The US researchers asked 90 people, including 40 with dementia, to carry out tasks including making toast with a brew, packing a lunch for a child and wrapping a present.

The participants were then asked to describe how they would perform the task and put pictures of each step of the task in the right order.

The scientists, from Temple University in Philadelphia, found that people with Alzheimer’s disease tended to miss out vital steps or forget they needed to do a task completely, while those with other forms of dementia had problems sorting the steps into the correct order. Study co-author Dr Tania Giovannetti said: ‘Early on, we can look at very subtle errors called “micro errors”. When we compare healthy agers to young people, there are more micro errors in healthy older adults than young adults, and they’re associated with memory problems and cognitive changes.

‘Healthy agers reach out to objects inefficiently, they touch them when they don’t need to, they make all these extra little actions. We think that might be the beginning of a problem.

‘If you have more of those, then you are more vulnerable to decline in future.’

Relatives of those who struggle with sequencing can help by giving them simple reminders such as ‘Eat breakfast’ or ‘Brush your teeth’, the Journal of Neuropsychology reports.

Dr Laura Phipps, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: ‘While small mistakes become more common with age, this isn’t necessarily a sign of a problem.’

‘Vulnerable to future decline’