Technologies are coming over for dinner : do ritual participation and meaning mediate effects on family life?

Tese de mestrado, Psicologia (Secção de Psicologia Clínica e da Saúde, Núcleo de Psicologia Clínica Sistémica), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Psicologia, 2017The current study investigated whether digital technology use during family mealtimes decreases levels of child participation in this ritual, and consequently of ritual meaning, which then affects couple satisfaction, family cohesion, parental satisfaction and self-efficacy. Variables were measured by self-reports completed by 72 Portuguese parents of 3-to-10-year-old children. Using structural equation modeling, we tested whether child participation during mealtimes mediated the link between parent/child technology use and dinnertime ritual meaning; and whether ritual meaning mediated the link between child participation and family outcomes. The model yielded an acceptable fit and hypotheses were supported, showing a significant effect of technology use by parents, but not children. Higher levels of technology use by parents seems to decrease child participation in dinner-related activities (-.32, p <.05), consequently affecting dinnertime ritual meaning (.70, p < .001) and, further, family cohesion (.39, p <.01), marital satisfaction (.25, p < .05) and parental satisfaction (.41, p < .01), but not parental efficacy. Results show modeling effects of technology use between marital partners (.76, p < .001) and between parent and child (.29, p < .05). These findings should encourage families to reduce technology use during mealtimes and promote child involvement to create more meaningful rituals and enhance family functioning and satisfaction.Este estudo procurou compreender se o uso de tecnologias digitais durante as refeições familiares diminui a participação da criança neste ritual, e consequentemente o significado do jantar, afetando a coesão familiar, a satisfação conjugal e o sentido de competência parental. Estas variáveis foram medidas através de instrumentos de autorrelato completados por 72 pais de crianças dos 3 aos 10 anos. Recorrendo a modelos de equações estruturais, testou-se o papel mediador da participação da criança na relação entre o uso de tecnologias pela família e o significado do jantar; e o papel mediador do significado do jantar na relação entre a participação da criança e as variáveis familiares. O modelo demonstrou um bom ajustamento e as hipóteses foram confirmadas, sendo que o uso de tecnologias pelos pais apresentou um efeito significativo sobre a participação da criança (-.32, p <.05), ao contrário do uso de tecnologias pelos filhos. Por sua vez, a menor participação da criança afetou o significado do jantar (.70, p < .001), reduzindo os níveis de coesão familiar (.39, p <.01), satisfação conjugal (.25, p < .05) e satisfação parental (.41, p < .01), sem afetar, porém, a eficácia parental. Foram encontrados efeitos de modelagem do uso de tecnologias entre pais (.76, p < .001) e entre pais e filhos (.29, p < .05). Os resultados sublinham a importância de reduzir o uso de tecnologias e envolver mais as crianças nas refeições, para aumentar o significado do ritual e promover o funcionamento e satisfação familiar

Digital commensality: Eating and drinking in the company of technology

Commensality is a key aspect of social dining. However, previous research has identified a number of pros and cons associated with the incorporation of digital technology into eating and drinking episodes. For instance, those who are distracted by digital technology may eat/drink more (that is, they may overconsume) as a result of their failure to attend to the food-related sensations that are thought to cue the termination of eating. Similarly, it has often been suggested that the use of mobile devices at mealtimes can disrupt the more commensal aspects of dining/drinking (at least among those who are physically present together). At the same time, however, looking to the future, it seems clear that digital technologies also hold the promise of delivering opportunities for enhanced multisensory experiential dining. For instance, they might be used to match the auditory, visual, or audiovisual entertainment to the eating/drinking episode (e.g., think only about watching a Bollywood movie while eating a home-delivery Indian meal, say). Indeed, given the growing societal problems associated with people dining by themselves, there are a number of routes by which digital technologies may increasingly help to connect the solo diner with physically co-located, remote, or even virtual dining partners. In this review of the literature, our focus is specifically on the role of technology in inhibiting/facilitating the more pleasurable social aspects of dining, what one might call “digital commensality.” The focus is primarily on Westernized adults with reasonable access to, and familiarity with, digital technologies

Comfort TV: considering everyday television use as a mode of self-care

This thesis argues that television is an overlooked, yet often highly significant source of comfort in everyday life. It examines television’s contribution to the resilience and wellbeing of three distinct audience groups: family units, first-year undergraduate students and hospital patients. An important resource for comfort and support in many of their lives – a way by which to feel better – study data indicates that watching television can be an instrumental activity. More accurately, specific television texts and viewing routines become salient in light of the viewer’s shifting subjectivity, relied upon to regulate their feelings (consciously or unconsciously) and respond to external influences. Presenting two in-depth, qualitative case studies involving family units and first-year undergraduate students, and a third utilising survey data from hospital patients, I consider what comfort TV is and evaluate the effectiveness of this mode of self-care for my audiences in context. Beginning with the impact of setting, I demonstrate how viewers are positioned by their environment and how their relation to a specific space or place influences their need for and reception of TV. Through doing this, I make an argument for television viewing as a form of emotional digression, a way to manage emotion and compensate for threats to personal continuity. Illustrating how comfort viewing facilitates important moments of transition for various members of my study sample, I then analyse the characteristics of the comfort text. Focusing on the traditional television sitcom – which presents as the archetypal comfort genre – I consider how the comfort television text is realised through a combination of formal characteristics and experiential qualities. Given the findings and particular context of this research, I conclude by looking at television’s current use in hospital care and suggest how the medium might fulfil a more therapeutic purpose

Celebratory technology to orchestrate the sharing of devices and stories during family mealtimes

While the idea of "celebratory technologies" during family mealtimes to support positive interactions at the dinner table is promising, there are few studies that investigate how these technologies can be meaningfully integrated into family practices. This paper presents the deployment of Chorus - a mealtime technology that orchestrates the sharing of personal devices and stories during family mealtimes, explores related content from all participants' devices, and supports revisiting previously shared content. A three-week field deployment with seven families shows that Chorus augments family interactions through sharing contents of personal and familial significance, supports togetherness and in-depth discussion by combining resources from multiple devices, helps to broach sensitive topics into familial conversation, and encourages participation from all family members including children. We discuss implications of this research and reflect on design choices and opportunities that can further enhance the family mealtime experience

The metafictive in picture books : a theoretical analysis of the nature and origins of contemporary children's picture books, with case studies of children reading picture book texts

The thesis is about picture books and how children read them, and is divided into three parts. In part one I identify a striking parallel between certain exemplary contemporary picture books and the tendency within adult fiction known as postmodernism or metafiction. I enlarge upon this analogy and attempt to establish a tentative taxonomy of metafictive picture books. Part one concludes with an account of an early attempt at exploring how young children read such texts, and with the establishing of the core questions of the thesis: i.e. what is the relation of the metafictive picture book to the form in general?; why is such a highly self-conscious, reflexive form of text found in picture books for young children?; and how do young children read such books? In part two I begin by reviewing the available literature on picture books and then attempt to construct a theory of picture book text. These core theoretical chapters (chapters five, six and seven) are concerned with the nature of pictorial representations and how readers read them; with a revisionist account of the historical origins of the picture book; and with the developing of a view of the picture book as a distinctivelypolysysiemic form of text - i.e. a form of text closely akin to the novel. An attempt is then made to answer the first two of the three main questions. The final part of the thesis explores, through a number of case studies, how young children might construe metafictive texts and traces some of the different ways in which they attempt to make sense of them

Companionable Learning: The Development Of Resilient Wellbeing From Birth To Three

What is wellbeing, and how does it develop? What situations and experiences in the first three years help to build resilient wellbeing in adolescence and young adulthood? This mixed-method research study investigated the development of resilient wellbeing from birth to three. A review of the literature established that children’s very early environments and relationships make a lasting impact on their long-term development. The review generated an ‘a priori’ set of constructs as the components of wellbeing. Three studies were undertaken, with three main objectives: to put to the test the ‘a priori’ constructs, and in the process to elaborate them; to identify situations and experiences from birth to three which facilitated the development of the foundations of wellbeing; and to identify implications for research, policy and practice in relation to the wellbeing of the youngest children and their families. Study 1 was a survey in which one hundred mothers of children under five were interviewed; Study 2 involved nine case study families over a period of twelve months, collecting video and audio data; and Study 3 was a series of focus group seminars in which researchers, policy makers, managers and practitioners were consulted. The ‘companionable’ approach taken in the research was found to be a fruitful process, with the ‘voices’ of the babies and very young children being an important aspect of the video data. The proposed conceptual model was found to be a robust framework within which to explore the development of resilient wellbeing. Among the situations and experiences that were found to be fundamentally important in the development of individual wellbeing were companionable learning, or ‘diagogy’; and companionable play. Wellbeing was found to be not only individual but also collective, in families and in communities

Towards a transnational feminist aesthetic: an analysis of selected prose writing by women of the South Asian diaspora

This thesis argues that women writers of the South Asian diaspora are inscribing a literary aesthetic which is recognisably feminist. In recent decades women of the South Asian diaspora have risen to the forefront of the global literary and publishing arena, winning acclaim for their endeavours. The scope of this literature is wide, in terms of themes, styles, genres, and geographic location. Prose works range from grave novelistic explorations of female subjectivity to short story collections intent on capturing historical injustices and the experiences of migration. The thesis demonstrates, through close readings and comparative frameworks, that an overarching pattern of common aesthetic elements is deployed in this literature. This deployment is regarded as a transnational feminist practice

Food and eating in fiction since 1950 with particular reference to the writing of Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, Michele Roberts and Alice Thomas Ellis.

PhDEating is a fundamental activity. What people eat, how and with whom, what they feel about food, what they do or do not want to eat and why - even who they eat - are of crucial significance in any reading of human behaviour. In this thesis, I consider the diverse and complex uses of food and eating in fiction since 1950, especially that written by women. I argue both that food and eating carry much of the meaning of a novel or story and that the acts of cooking, feeding and eating depicted are inseparable from issues of power and control: individually, interpersonally, culturally, politically. My discussion centres on the writing of Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, Michele Roberts and Alice Thomas Ellis. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, sociology, anthropology, Foucault, Bakhtin and others, the thesis aims to construct an interdisciplinary perspective which both resists reductive interpretations and emphasises the centrality, complexity and diversity of food and eating in literature in our culture. I begin with an examination of the ambiguities of maternal feeding and nurturing, moving on to explore the links between appetite, eating and sexuality. I explore cannibalism and vampirism as manifestations of oppression, but also as indicating insatiable emptiness and transgressive appetite. The body itself is crucial, and my argument considers the paradox of not eating as control/enslavement, also tracing self-starvation as a positive route towards wholeness and connection. The last part of my argument focuses on social eating, examining conventions, rituals and food itself in connection with power relations, and finally considers how we might truly speak of food and eating in the context of society as a whole