40 research outputs found

    Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume. Volume 2

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    This is the complete volume of HMC Volume 2

    Bonding with Robotic Pets. Children’s Cognitions, Emotions and Behaviors towards Pet-Robots. Applications in a Robot Assisted Quality of Life Intervention in a Pediatric Hospital

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    [eng] This dissertation addresses the emergence of emotional involvement in the interaction with social robots. More specifically, we investigate the dynamics of children bonding with robotic pets to design robot based programs to improve patients’ experience in pediatric hospitals. Pet-robots are robots that mimic real pets as dogs or cats, both in appearance and in behavior. We assume that gaining understanding of the emotional dimension of children/pet-robots interaction would contribute to evaluate the impact of pet-robots in children’s lives, and to inform both robots’ design and robot-based applications for health and wellbeing. First, this research presents a novel model of bonding with robotic pets inspired in the human-animal affiliation and particularly in child-dog relatedness, where bonding is envisaged as a process towards companionship that evolves through three stages –first impression, short-term interaction and lasting relationship- characterized by distinguishable patterns of behaviors, cognitions and feelings that can be identified and measured. Secondly, a behavioral analysis of children interacting with the Pleo robot -a robotic pet shaped as a baby dinosaur-, with an emphasis on the interactional surface and particularly on the sequences of dyad’s reciprocal exchange is presented. The outcomes are twofold: the ethograms and coding schemes of Pleo’s and children’s behaviors and a higher level categorization of behaviors involved in bond forming that can be applied to other platforms and users. Thirdly, a naturalistic study carried out in a pediatric hospital to observe the interactive practices with the Pleo robot in the wild and to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a Pleo-based intervention to accompany children is analyzed and discussed. Inspired on the beneficial effects of real pets’ company, the study consisted in an intensive ethnography, a systematic observation of a group play session and a follow-up case study of an experience of adopting a Pleo. Our results show that the key mechanism driving bond forming is the robot’s capability to deploy credible attachment behaviors –proximity seeking and resource soliciting- that elicit complementary nurturing and play behaviors in children. Beyond the novelty effect, self-reinforcing processes as learning and evolution can keep children engaged in rewarding interaction with the robot over time. Moreover, Pleo’s versatility allows diverse modalities of interaction and individual and group play, satisfying different needs as company, technological curiosity, entertainment and social facilitation both for normatively developed children and for children with special needs and their families. In general, the introduction of robot-based play was regarded by the hospital professionals not only as compatible with their daily day practice but valuable as a regular resource to smooth children’s stay at the hospital.[cat] Aquesta tesi aborda el sorgiment de la implicació emocional en la interacció amb els robots socials. Més específicament, s'investiga la dinàmica de la afiliació dels nens amb les mascotes robòtiques – robots que evoquen els animals de companyia- per tal de dissenyar programes basats en robots per millorar l'experiència dels pacients en els hospitals pediàtrics. Considerem que investigar la dimensió emocional de la interacció nen/robots-mascota contribuirà a avaluar-ne el seu impacte en la vida del nens i nenes, i a informar el disseny d’aquests robots i de les aplicacions que se’n deriven per a la seva salut i benestar. A partir d’un model evolutiu original de vinculació nen-robot inspirat en la afiliació d'humans i animals - i més concretament, en la relació nen-gos- s’analitza el comportament de nens interactuant amb el robot Pleo –robot mascota en forma de nadó dinosaure-, amb un èmfasi en les seqüències d'intercanvi recíproc de la diada. Els resultats són de dos tipus: els etogrames del Pleo i dels nens, i una categorització conductual a més alt nivell, aplicables a altres plataformes i usuaris. A partir d’aquest estudi, s’analitza una experiència d’intervenció en un hospital pediàtric per observar les pràctiques interactives amb el robot Pleo, i per avaluar la viabilitat i l'eficàcia d'una intervenció basada en el Pleo per acompanyar els nens. Inspirat en els efectes beneficiosos de la companyia de mascotes reals, l'estudi va consistir en una etnografia, una anàlisi observacional d'una sessió de joc en grup amb el robot, i un estudi de cas longitudinal d'una experiència d’adopció d’un Pleo. Els resultats mostren que l’aspecte clau que impulsa la formació del vincle és la capacitat del robot per desplegar conductes d’aferrament creïbles –cerca de proximitat i sol·licitud de recursos- que provoquen comportaments complementaris de criança i joc en els nens, més enllà de l'efecte novetat. D'altra banda, la versatilitat de Pleo permet diverses modalitats d'interacció i joc, i satisfer diferents necessitats dels usuaris, com ara companyia, curiositat, entreteniment i facilitació social, també per nens i nenes amb necessitats especials i les seves famílies. En general, la introducció del joc basat en el robot va ser considerada pels professionals de l'hospital no només compatible amb la seva pràctica professional, sinó també com un recurs valuós per alleugerir l'estada dels nens a l'hospital

    Feral Ecologies: A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Media

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    This dissertation wonders what non-human animals can illuminate about media in the visible contact zones where they meet. It treats these zones as rich field sites from which to excavate neglected material-discursive-semiotic relationships between animals and media. What these encounters demonstrate is that animals are historically and theoretically implicated in the imagination and materialization of media and their attendant processes of communication. Chapter 1 addresses how animals have been excluded from the cultural production of knowledge as a result of an anthropocentric perspective that renders them invisible or reduces them to ciphers for human meanings. It combines ethology and cinematic realism to craft a reparative, non-anthropocentric way of looking that is able to accommodate the plenitude of animals and their traces, and grant them the ontological heft required to exert productive traction in the visual field. Chapter 2 identifies an octopuss encounter with a digital camera and its chance cinematic inscription as part of a larger phenomenon of accidental animal videos. Because non-humans are the catalysts for their production, these videos offer welcome realist counterpoints to traditional wildlife imagery, and affirm cinemas ability to intercede non-anthropocentrically between humans and the world. Realism is essential to cinematic communication, and that realism is ultimately an achievement of non-human intervention. Chapter 3 investigates how an Internet hoax about a non-human ape playing with an iPad in a zoo led to the development of Apps for Apes, a real life enrichment project that pairs captive orangutans with iPads. It contextualizes and criticizes this projects discursive underpinnings but argues that the contingencies that transpire at the touchscreen interface shift our understanding of communication away from sharing minds and toward respecting immanence and accommodating difference. Finally, Chapter 4 examines a publicity stunt wherein a digital data-carrying homing pigeon races against the Internet to meet a computer. Rather than a competition, this is a continuation of a longstanding collaboration between the carrier pigeon and the infrastructure of modern communications. The carrier pigeon is not external but rather endemic to our understanding of communication as a material process that requires movement and coordination to make connections

    Substandard flight crew performance: recurrent human factors in flight crew initiated aircraft incidents and accidents

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    The objective of this research has been to understand more about aviation accidents in which the actions of the flight crew members (hereafter FCMs) were the main cause. A new con-struct has been developed known as substandard flight crew performance (hereafter SFP) to provide framework and context for this research. To support this construct, the most recurrent examples of SFP were identified from analysis of decades of investigations and reports. Based upon the frequency of occurrence, the potential contribution to aviation safety, and the feasibility of conducting meaningful research, three diverse but interconnected factors have been identified. The first of these related to the recurrent influence of verbal phenomena in aviation accidents, in particular, distracting conversations and unclear communications. [Continues.

    Advancing a Morphogenetic Understanding of Organisational Behaviour: An Investigation into the Psychological Mechanisms and Organisational Behavioural Tendencies of Autonomous Reflexivity

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    It has been argued that the inertial forces of traditional societies are being gradually eroded under the weight of the destabilising forces imbued in nascent globalisation. For the new cosmopolitans of late modernity, this means that forging a sense of self is therefore becoming increasingly a reflexive project. This thesis celebrates reflexivity as an emergent human power. Three dominant modes of human reflexivity have been identified; communicative, autonomous, meta. Fractured reflexivity on the other hand is considered as non-reflexive. Moreover, the contextual discontinuity favoured by late modern societies appears to be selective, conditioning structural circumstances in favour of autonomous reflexivity in mainstream organisations. In the first instance, the findings of this thesis expose the fragility of the internal reliability of the measurement models of the modes of Archer’s internal conversation index (ICONI). Secondly, drawing on the resources of critical realism, this thesis’ further contribution to knowledge is in revealing the positive psychological resources associated with an autonomous reflexivity intervention. By adopting an evidence-based realist review followed in sequence by a large scale survey and structural equation modelling, the findings suggest that autonomous reflexivity potentially holds the key to unlocking the resources that underlie positive psychological capital (PsyCap). In turn, PsyCap seems to operate in the intervening space between internal conversation and action accounting for the positive sense of self associated with autonomous reflexivity. However, autonomous reflexivity does not mean unrestricted homo economicus, rather it means the search for congruence between a particular modus vivendi and a meaningful work context. Thus, this thesis also shows that autonomous reflexivity and the experience of contextual discontinuity at work share in a reciprocal relationship. Such congruency translates into positive organisational outcomes at the individual level albeit with the tendency to be mediated by positive PsyCap

    Selected papers on Hands-on Science II

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    This second volume of the "Selected Papers on Hands-on Science" the Hands-on Science Network is publishing, reunites some of the most relevant works presented at the 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 editions of the annual International Conference on Hands-on Science. From pre-school science education to lifelong science learning and teacher training, in formal non-formal and informal contexts, the large diversified range of works that conforms this book surely renders it an important tool to schools and educators and all involved in science education and on the promotion of scientific literacy.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Whoever Said Change Was Good: The Transforming Body of the Disney Villainess

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    This dissertation examines female figures in Disney animation through the lens of Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), a system for observing and articulating movement qualities. Drawing from six major films released between 1937 and 2010, I focus my inquiry on how the bodies and movement of Disneys villainesses reflect and/or perpetuate cultural imaginaries of women. I identify the influence of several cultural tropes of femininity, including fairy-tale archetypes, ballet conventions, and the Hollywood femme fatale, and explore how they constellate social understandings of age, beauty, and desirability. Coalescing around the theme of physical transformation, the study investigates how consistent movement patterns both support character animation and reflect gender ideologies encoded in the bodies of these wicked women. Through a methodology grounded in LMA and drawing from dance studies, feminist theory, and Disney scholarship, I interrogate popular conceptions of women and evil, articulate how movement contributes to cultural meaning, and demonstrate LMAs value to cultural analysis and animation

    Queer Surrealism: Desire as Praxis

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    This dissertation examines an overlapping range of concerns, practices and ideas shared by sur-realism and gay liberation and attempts to situate them in relation to each other in order to theo-rize a specifically “queer surrealist” nexus and identify its political and creative potential for the present day. In order to do so it identifies three particular loci of concern: the erotic, aesthesis as a perceptual mode, and the occult, and then examines the specific treatment and theoretical use the two movements made of these in order to identify generative possibilities for their synthesis. Building on this analytical work, the dissertation then proposes a model of a Queer Surrealism as a deliberate cultivation of subjectivity rooted in praxis and positioned against a perpetually de-ferred and utopian horizon that consequently requires constant rearticulation/reimagining. It fur-ther offers a research-creation component (a collection of prose poems) that attempts to actively engage and embody these ideas as a complement to the critical or theoretical exploration

    Doing diabetes (Type 1): Symbiotic ethics and practices of care embodied in human-canine collaborations and olfactory sensitivity

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    This project studies domesticated healthy members of the canine species, who are educated to make use of their olfactory sensitivity in working with unwell members of the human species, and examines their situatedness, attempting also to comprehend their perspectives. The discipline of anthrozoology, newly added to the social sciences, emphasises a present and future need for an ethics that is involved in, allows for and advocates multispecies' dependencies and interdependencies.The chronically ill participants in this study are vulnerable experts in life’s uncertainties, and have become aware over time of multiple medical and social needs and practices. But, unlike the hypo-aware respondents documented in some studies of diabetes mellitus Type 1, these research participants are also conscious of their inability to recognise when their own fluctuating blood glucose levels are rising or falling to extremes, a loss of hyper- or hypo-awareness that puts their lives constantly at risk. Particular sources of better life management, increased self-esteem and means of social (re-)integration are trained medical alert assistance dogs who share the human home, and through keen olfactory sensitivity, are able to give advance warning when their partners’ blood sugar levels enter ‘danger’ zones. Research studies in anthrozoology and anthropology provide extensive literature on historic and contemporary human bonds with domestic and/or wild nonhuman animals. Equally, the sociology of health and illness continues to extend research into care practices performed to assist people with chronic illness. This study draws from these disciplines in order to add to multispecies ethnographic literature by exploring human-canine engagement, contribution and narrative, detailing the impact each member of the dyad has on the other, and by observing the 'doing' of the partnerships' daily routines to ward off hypo-glycaemia and hospitalisation. In addition, the project investigates the place, role and 'otherness' of a medical alert dog in a chronically ill person's understanding of 'the-body-they-do'. The perspective of symbolic interactionism assists in disentangling individual and shared meanings inherent in the interspecies collaboration by examining the mutualistic practices of care performed. The often-flexible moral boundaries that humans construct to differentiate between acceptable use and unacceptable exploitation of nonhuman animals are questioned within ethics-of-care theory, based on the concept of dogs as animate instruments and biomedical resources
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