Designing inclusive & playful technologies for pre-school children

This paper reports on an investigation into the potential of everyday technologies to foster playful experiences for young children prior to their formal education. The aim is to consider how best to design age appropriate experiences that are desirable and useful within pre-school settings, and to assist practitioners in experimenting with technologies in the early years school curriculum. This phase of the study focuses on observations of the real-time, non-digital play of young children in a pre-school playgroup and the subsequent introduction of group activities with affordable, non-specialist devices such as ReacTickles, Wii remote and microphone. The study captures the vital inspiration phase of design research. By utilizing observation and interview as an analytical framework to help practitioners to articulate the nuances of playful interaction, the designers have been able to draw early conclusions that provide the guiding principles for future design

Effects of Reapeated Doses of Caffeine on Performance and Alertness: New Data and Secondary Analyses

Rationale The effects of caffeine on mood and performance are well established. Some authors suggest that caffeine merely reverses effects of caffeine withdrawal rather than having direct behavioural effects. It has also been suggested that withdrawal may be removed by a first dose of caffeine and further doses have little subsequent effect. These issues were examined here. Objectives The present study aimed to determine whether caffeine withdrawal influenced mood and performance by comparing regular consumers who had been withdrawn from caffeine overnight with non-consumers. Following this repeated caffeine doses were administered to test the claim that repeated dosing has no extra effect on mood or performance. Secondary analyses of a data collected by Christopher et al. (2003) were also carried out to examine some alternative explanations of their results which showed effects of caffeine after a day of normal caffeine consumption. Methods One hundred and twenty volunteers participated in the study. Regular caffeine consumption was assessed by questionnaire and this showed that thirty six of the sample did not regularly consume caffeinated beve rages. Volunteers were instructed to abstain from caffeine overnight and then completed a baseline session measuring mood and a range of cognitive functions at 08.00 the next day. Following this volunteers were given 0, or 1mg/kg caffeine in a milkshake, glucose solution or water (at 09:00), followed by a second 0 or 1mg/kg caffeine dose (at 09:40) and the test battery repeated at 10:00. Results The baseline data showed no effect of overnight caffeine withdrawal on mood or performance. In contrast, caffeine challenge improved vigilance performance and prevented decreases in alertness induced by completion of the task battery. The magnitude of these effects increased as a function of the number of doses of caffeine given. Secondary analyses of data from Christopher et al. (2003) also confirmed that effects of caffeine did not depend on length of withdrawal. Conclusions The present findings show no effect of overnight caffeine withdrawal on mood and performance. Caffeine challenge did have the predicted effect on alertness and vigilance, with the size of the effects increasing with caffeine dose. These findings suggest that the effects of caffeine are not due to reversal of effects of withdrawal, a view confirmed by secondary analyses of data collected after a day of normal caffe ine consumption