An Ohio retirement home is offering "experimental aging" courses to help people understand and sympathize with the elderly. Westminister Thurber Retirement Community's "Xtreme Aging" class begins by showing students the disabilities that many older people experience. Glasses to distort vision, cotton balls to dim hearing, latex gloves to decrease dexterity and corn kernels for shoes simulating foot pain are all provided in the course. Students then have to perform a variety of simple tasks with the intention of understanding how difficult they are to perform with the added disadvantages. Dr. Vicki Rosebrook, director of the Macklin Intergenerational Institute, said that this training helps the staff and students to "relate emotionally". "They said, 'That could be my mother,' or 'That could be my grandma.' "

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