The Inevitability of Collision: Creating Empathy Through Fiction

While the stigma for mental illnesses has greatly declined in the last decade, there is still a disconnect between individuals without neurological illnesses and those with neurological illnesses, especially those that cause individuals to lose contact with reality. The goal of this interdisciplinary paper is to create empathy for these individuals, specifically people with schizophrenia, Alzheimer disease, and post-traumatic amnesia. Through a collection of four stories told from the perspective of these unreliable narrators, I used fiction writing techniques from the field of cognitive literary studies such as gapping and defamiliarization to create more empathy in the reader. In reading stories through the first-person perspective of these individuals with neurological disorders, the reader gains a better understanding of what it would be like to experience these disorders and how disorienting it would be to lose contact with reality or your memories. The stories are followed by an appendix outlining the history, symptomology, neurobiological basis, and treatment options for each of the diseases. This helps the reader connect the behavior seen in the stories to the neuroscience behind it, as well as understand the history and stigma behind each disorder. After all, we are more similar than we think because we are all the unreliable narrators of our own stories

Engaging older adults and people with dementia in the design of digital technologies

PhD ThesisImprovements in healthcare and nutrition have led to increased life expectancies for people around the world, and a growing need to support the larger numbers of older people living with chronic and age-related health conditions. Although the use of digital technologies is increasingly proposed for health and social care solutions, in practice the designers of these technologies are ill equipped to actively engage older people and in particular people with syndromes such as dementia. An examination of previous work on design for older people, and people with dementia, suggests that poor design arises from a gulf in knowledge and experience between the designers and their subjects. To address this divide the KITE participatory design method for engaging people with dementia in design is proposed. KITE facilitates engagement by structuring and scaffolding an empathic relationship between designers and their participants. The approach is elaborated and evaluated through an exercise to design a digital technology to help people with dementia have safe walking experiences. The analysis of this process leads to the formulation of the OASIS design method which is intended to apply to older people more generally. OASIS is evaluated and refined through a number of design studies for technologies to support healthy eating, day-to-day travelling needs and living safely within the community. Reflection on the application of the OASIS method highlights a number of key strategies that can be used to establish and maintain respectful, empathic, and productive participatory design relationships with older adults and people with dementia

An experimental investigation using Cognitive Bias Modification for paranoid attributions in a non-clinical sample: Effects upon interpretation bias, emotions, and paranoia following a stressful paranoia induction.

Background: Bentall, Corcoran, Howard, Blackwood, and Kinderman (2001) suggested that paranoid individuals display an ‘external-personal bias’ of blaming negative events on other people rather than situational circumstances or themselves, however, the literature remains equivocal. This study tested whether Cognitive Bias Modification for Interpretations (CBM-I) could train a positive attribution bias and affect subsequent reactions to a stressor designed to induce paranoia. Method: Non-clinical participants were randomly assigned to positive CBM-I training (n = 18), or a neutral control CBM-I (n = 17). Participants were then subject to a stressful paranoia induction: seeing a live video of themselves whilst accessing negative self-beliefs and being given negative feedback when attempting an impossible task. The subsequent effects upon interpretation bias and state paranoia and emotions were assessed. Results: After the paranoia induction, participants in the positive CBM-I group demonstrated a more positive interpretation bias than those in the neutral control group: they endorsed less paranoid interpretations, although there was no difference in ratings of positive interpretations. However, both groups reported a similar increase in state paranoia and suspiciousness after the stressful paranoia induction, and there was no relationship between the trained interpretation bias and the changes in state paranoia. Unexpectedly, pre-existing trait paranoia was correlated with state paranoia and interpretation bias after the stressor. xiv Conclusions: This study demonstrated that CBM-I can train non-clinical participants to endorse less paranoid interpretations. Pre-existing trait paranoia had a stronger relationship to interpretative bias and state paranoia under stress than the CBM-I. The lack of a subsequent effect on emotional reactions suggests that further research is necessary to refine the materials and procedure, and test for possible small or varied effects in a larger sample. Unfortunately, significant methodological problems limit the conclusions that can be drawn about the theory that an externalpersonal attribution bias causes paranoia

The Prologue Past

The Prologue Past is a collection of four essays and one novella which explore the past in different fashions. Memory, and the ability to reflect and find meaning in our experiences, is an important cornerstone of engaging the past. Memories are a true anomaly of how our inner-consciousness operates. With each day, the past facilitates a special part of our memory bank which we seldom have any control of. While the abilities of people to recall times, events, places, and experiences differ largely in capacity, we all undoubtedly share universal traits in the manner in which we hold onto our memories. I\u27m personally fascinated by the notion of unreliable memory or the inability to recall a past event in a concrete moment in time. I\u27m equally intrigued by what\u27s tied to our most vivid recollections of the past, involving adrenaline and emotion. My exploration of memory-and how it\u27s ascertained and utilized-is based on certain moments in my life presented in these personal stories, which range from childhood endeavors to adult conquests, seemingly linked together through particular themes of fear, loss, and hope