Skills training for activities of daily living in persons living with dementia: a scoping review

Objective In this scoping review, we aimed to systematically map evidence from randomized controlled trials investigating activities of daily living (ADL) skills training for persons living with dementia (PLWD), delineate key knowledge gaps, and provide recommendations for future research and clinical practice.Methods We searched five electronic databases (PubMed, CENTRAL, Scopus, PEDro, and CINAHL). Two reviewers independently conducted the screening, data extraction, and methodological quality assessment.Results In total, 2038 studies were identified, and four were included. Most participants had mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease. The learning strategies examined included errorless learning, trial-and-error learning, modeling, and spaced retrieval. All studies used performance-based assessments and reported significant improvements in ADL; however, only one study included a comparator group without skills training. No particular learning strategy was consistently more effective than the others.Conclusions Key knowledge gaps were identified, including limited coverage across dementia etiologies and severity levels, insufficient comparisons with control conditions, and limited evidence to inform selection among learning strategies. Clinically, skills training should be applied with careful consideration of pathophysiology and task characteristics. Future randomized controlled trials should refine skills training to facilitate ADL learning in PLWD by establishing evidence-informed criteria for learning-strategy selection and identifying strategies better suited to PLWD.