A longitudinal study of text entry by gazing and smiling

Face Interface is a wearable device that combines the use of voluntary gaze direction and facial activations, for pointing and selecting objects on a computer screen, respectively. In this thesis a longitudinal study for entering text using Face Interface is presented. The aim of the study was to investigate entering text with Face Interface within a longer period of time. Twelve voluntary participants took part in an experiment that consisted of ten 15-minutes long sessions. The task of the participant in each session was to write text in fifteen minutes with Face Interface and an onscreen keyboard. Writing was done by pointing at the characters by gaze and selected by smiling. The results showed that the overall mean text entry rate for all sessions was 5.39 words per minute (wpm). In the first session the overall mean text entry rate was 3.88 wpm, and in the tenth session 6.59 wpm. The overall mean minimum string distance (MSD) error rate for all sessions was 0.25. In the first session the overall mean MSD error rate was 0.50 and in the tenth session 0.05. The overall mean keystrokes per character (KSPC) value for all sessions was 1.18. In the first session the overall mean KSPC value was 1.26 and in the tenth session 1.2. Subjective ratings showed that Face Interface was easy to use. The rating of the overall operation of Face Interface was 5.9/7.0 in the tenth session. Subjective ratings were positive in all categories in the tenth session

From Engagement to Disengagement in a Psychiatric Assessment Process

In a longitudinal conversation analytical (CA) case study, we examined patient engagement in a psychiatric assessment process (nine clinical interviews) with a young woman who eventually received the diagnosis of personality disorder. Based on Goffman, we consider engagement in interaction as consisting of three facets: engagement in the action at hand, bodily engagement with the co-participant, and engagement with the local moral order of the encounter. The patient begins the assessment process with high engagement and ends it up in low engagement. Yet, during this process, the patient oscillates between moments of high and low engagement. We show how the Goffmanian idea of engagement can be elaborated by CA. On the other hand, the Goffmanian view enriches CA by bringing to the foreground the interconnectedness of the different facets of engagement. A video abstract is available at .Peer reviewe

Relationship-building through embodied feedback: Teacher-student alignment in writing conferences

Over the last two decades, an impressive amount of work has been done on the interaction that takes place during writing conferences (Ewert, 2009). However, most previous studies focused on the instructional aspects of conference discourse, without considering its affective components. Yet conferences are by no means emotionally neutral (Witt & Kerssen-Griep, 2011), as they involve evaluation of student work, correction, directions for improvement, and even criticism—that is, they involve potentially face-threatening acts. Therefore, it is important for teachers to know how to conference with students in non-threatening and affiliative ways. The present study examines 1) the interactional resources, including talk and embodied action (e.g., gaze, facial expression, gesture, body position) that one experienced writing instructor used in writing conferences to respond to student writers and their writings in affiliative ways, and 2) the interactional resources that the teacher used to repair disaffiliative actions—either her own or those of the students—in conference interaction. The data for the study are comprised of 14 video recordings of conference interaction between one instructor and two students collected over a 16-week semester in an introductory composition course for international students at a large U.S. university. Data were analyzed using methods from conversation analysis (Jefferson, 1988; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 2007; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973) and multimodal interaction analysis (Nishino & Atkinson, 2015; Norris, 2004, 2013). The conceptual framework adopted in this study is based on the notions of embodied interaction (Streeck, Goodwin, & LeBaron, 2011a, 2011b), embodied participation frameworks (Goodwin, 2000a), and alignment (Atkinson, Churchill, Nishino, & Okada, 2007). Findings indicate that the instructor was responsive to the potentialities of face-threatening acts during conference interaction, and she effectively employed various interactional resources not only in responding to student writing in affiliative and non-threatening ways, but also in repairing the disruption in alignment caused by disaffiliative actions of either of the participants. This study demonstrates the value of teachers’ embodied actions not only as tools that facilitate instruction but also as resources that can be used to keep a positive atmosphere in writing conferences. The findings contribute to the existing body of research on writing conferences, feedback, embodied practices in teacher-student interaction, and teacher-student relationships and rapport. The study also has implications for general classroom pedagogy, second language teaching, and second language writing instruction

Design and evaluation of a time adaptive multimodal virtual keyboard

The usability of virtual keyboard based eyetyping systems is currently limited due to the lack of adaptive and user-centered approaches leading to low text entry rate and the need for frequent recalibration. In this work, we propose a set of methods for the dwell time adaptation in asynchronous mode and trial period in synchronous mode for gaze based virtual keyboards. The rules take into account commands that allow corrections in the application, and it has been tested on a newly developed virtual keyboard for a structurally complex language by using a two-stage tree-based character selection arrangement.We propose several dwell-based and dwell-free mechanisms with the multimodal access facility wherein the search of a target item is achieved through gaze detection and the selection can happen via the use of a dwell time, softswitch, or gesture detection using surface electromyography (sEMG) in asynchronous mode; while in the synchronous mode, both the search and selection may be performed with just the eye-tracker. The system performance is evaluated in terms of text entry rate and information transfer rate with 20 different experimental conditions. The proposed strategy for adapting theparameters over time has shown a signicant improvement (more than 40%) over non-adaptive approaches for new users. The multimodal dwell-free mechanismusing a combination of eye-tracking and soft-switch provides better performance than adaptive methods with eye-tracking only. The overall system receives an excellentgrade on adjective rating scale using the system usability scale and a low weighted rating on the NASA task load index, demonstrating the user-centered focus of the system

Change processes in relationships: a relational-historical research approach

Journal ArticleThis work was supported by grants to Alan Fogel from the National Institute of Health (R01 HD21036), the National Science Foundation (BNS9006756) and the National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH48680), and by a grant to Andrea Garvey from the National Science Foundation of Brazil (CNPq). We gratefully acknowledge the comments and suggestions of Yolanda van Beek, Antonella Brighi, George Butterworth, Ken Critchfield, Maria Luisa Genta, Shane Roller, Manuela Lavelli, Marc Lewis, Sarah Lucas, G. Christina Nelson-Goens, Marie-Germaine Pecheaux, Josette Ruel, Lisa Taylor, and Dankert Vedeler

Mother-infant interaction in delayed infants of three diagnostic groups involved in early intervention.

The goal of the present study was to assess the effects of diagnostic group and time in early intervention, on mother-infant interaction with delayed infants. Three diagnostic groups were represented: Down\u27s Syndrome (n = 24), Neurologically impaired (n = 38), and Unknown etiology (n = 16). Dyads were visited by a research coordinator before entering the early intervention program and one year after entry. Assessed were 13 parent behaviors and 5 child behaviors. The Down\u27s Syndrome group exhibited positive change in more areas than the other two groups. The Neurological group demonstrated change in the fewest number of areas. Results were discussed in terms of implications for future research and clinical work: the importance of recognizing heterogeneity in the delayed population and the potential for improving service delivery to specific members of the delayed population. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)Dept. of Psychology. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1992 .S635. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 31-04, page: 1942. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1992

Infant touching behaviours during mother-infant face-to-face interactions : effects of changes in maternal emotional and physical availability in normative and at-risk populations

Mother-infant interactions are fundamental to infant socio-emotional development. Through mutually regulated exchanges in the first year of life, infants develop critical communicative and regulatory skills. Infant touch is a central channel through which infants communicate their underlying affective states, regulate their emotions, and explore their surroundings. Yet despite its importance, there is a paucity of research examining infant touch. The current dissertation was designed to investigate infants' touching behaviours during mother-infant face-to-face interactions. A series of two studies investigating infant touch in the context of infants' other communicative modalities during interactions with variations in maternal availability was conducted. Study 1 examined how touch co-occurs with distal modalities (i.e. gaze, affect), and investigated the functions of touch (i.e. communicative, regulatory, exploratory). Findings revealed that touch is organized with gaze and affect into meaningful affective displays, and that infants use touch to self-regulate and explore when mothers are emotionally unavailable. The impact of the quality of the relationship (i.e. maternal emotional availability indicators, such as sensitivity and hostility) on infants' touching behaviours was also examined. Findings demonstrated greater engagement through touch in infants with more sensitive mothers. Study 2 investigated infants' touching behaviours in an at-risk sample of depressed and non-depressed mothers exhibiting poor relationship indicators (i.e. sub-optimal emotional availability). Touch was compared during periods of emotional versus physical unavailability, revealing greater reactive types of touch during physical unavailability. Findings also highlighted the impact of maternal risk on infants' touching behaviours: infants of depressed mothers exhibited more reactive types of touch compared to infants of non-depressed mothers, and negative relationship indicators (e.g. maternal hostility, intrusiveness) predicted regulatory tactile behaviours. Taken together, the present findings contribute to current knowledge on touch during early socio-emotional development. Results underscore that infants are active participants during their social exchanges and that they vary their tactile behaviours as a function of maternal availability. The findings clarify how infants use touch (i.e. to regulate, explore) when mothers are unavailable, and imply that touch serves a communicative role during pre-verbal development. Finally, this research offers insight into the impact of maternal risk on infants' regulatory abilities and the dyadic processes of co-regulatio