Does posture impact affective word processing? Examining the role of posture across adulthood in an incidental encoding task

Research in emotional aging has primarily investigated mechanisms that could explain the age-related increase in positive emotionality despite various age-related losses. Of particular note is the increasing importance of age-related positivity effects and underlying biological influences on affective processes. Despite evidence of weakened mind-body connectivity in older adulthood presented in the maturation dualism framework, research shows age-similarities in subjective and objective reactivity for certain negative emotional states across adulthood. Thus, robust physiological-experiential associations may still exist in later life. Investigations of integrated mind-body connectivity have lead researchers to examine the influence of posture on cognitive outcomes. Prior evidence has observed that specific postural manipulations (i.e., stooped posture) is linked to negative affective biases in memory and emotional experiences. To interrogate potential posture effects on word recognition, an incidental encoding task was utilized. Although no age differences emerged for concrete words, younger adults outperformed older adults on both negative and neutral abstract words, and older adults remembered more positive relative to neutral abstract words. These results provide partial support for age-related positivity, perhaps in line with older adults’ motivated positive affective goals. Although posture effects were absent in both age groups, there remains considerable room for other integrative research assessing mind-body connectivity within emotion-cognition links across adulthood

Does posture impact affective word processing? Examining the role of posture across adulthood in an incidental encoding task

Research in emotional aging has primarily investigated mechanisms that could explain the age-related increase in positive emotionality despite various age-related losses. Of particular note is the increasing importance of age-related positivity effects and underlying biological influences on affective processes. Despite evidence of weakened mind-body connectivity in older adulthood presented in the maturation dualism framework, research shows age-similarities in subjective and objective reactivity for certain negative emotional states across adulthood. Thus, robust physiological-experiential associations may still exist in later life. Investigations of integrated mind-body connectivity have lead researchers to examine the influence of posture on cognitive outcomes. Prior evidence has observed that specific postural manipulations (i.e., stooped posture) is linked to negative affective biases in memory and emotional experiences. To interrogate potential posture effects on word recognition, an incidental encoding task was utilized. Although no age differences emerged for concrete words, younger adults outperformed older adults on both negative and neutral abstract words, and older adults remembered more positive relative to neutral abstract words. These results provide partial support for age-related positivity, perhaps in line with older adults’ motivated positive affective goals. Although posture effects were absent in both age groups, there remains considerable room for other integrative research assessing mind-body connectivity within emotion-cognition links across adulthood

Recognition of human body posture from a cloud of 3D data points using wavelet transform coefficients

Addresses the problem of recognizing a human body posture from a cloud of 3D points acquired by a human body scanner. Motivated by finding a representation that embodies a high discriminatory power between posture classes, a new type of feature is suggested, namely the wavelet transform coefficients (WTC) of the 3D data-point distribution projected on to the space of spherical harmonics. A feature selection technique is developed to find those features with high discriminatory power. Integrated within a Bayesian classification framework and compared with other standard features, the WTC showed great capability in discriminating between close postures. The qualities of the WTC features were also reflected in the experimental results carried out with artificially generated postures, where the WTC obtained the best classification rat

A human computer interactions framework for biometric user identification

Computer assisted functionalities and services have saturated our world becoming such an integral part of our daily activities that we hardly notice them. In this study we are focusing on enhancements in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that can be achieved by natural user recognition embedded in the employed interaction models. Natural identification among humans is mostly based on biometric characteristics representing what-we-are (face, body outlook, voice, etc.) and how-we-behave (gait, gestures, posture, etc.) Following this observation, we investigate different approaches and methods for adapting existing biometric identification methods and technologies to the needs of evolving natural human computer interfaces

Assistive technology design and development for acceptable robotics companions for ageing years

© 2013 Farshid Amirabdollahian et al., licensee Versita Sp. z o. o. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author.A new stream of research and development responds to changes in life expectancy across the world. It includes technologies which enhance well-being of individuals, specifically for older people. The ACCOMPANY project focuses on home companion technologies and issues surrounding technology development for assistive purposes. The project responds to some overlooked aspects of technology design, divided into multiple areas such as empathic and social human-robot interaction, robot learning and memory visualisation, and monitoring persons’ activities at home. To bring these aspects together, a dedicated task is identified to ensure technological integration of these multiple approaches on an existing robotic platform, Care-O-Bot®3 in the context of a smart-home environment utilising a multitude of sensor arrays. Formative and summative evaluation cycles are then used to assess the emerging prototype towards identifying acceptable behaviours and roles for the robot, for example role as a butler or a trainer, while also comparing user requirements to achieved progress. In a novel approach, the project considers ethical concerns and by highlighting principles such as autonomy, independence, enablement, safety and privacy, it embarks on providing a discussion medium where user views on these principles and the existing tension between some of these principles, for example tension between privacy and autonomy over safety, can be captured and considered in design cycles and throughout project developmentsPeer reviewe