Affective Medicine: a review of Affective Computing efforts in Medical Informatics

Background: Affective computing (AC) is concerned with emotional interactions performed with and through computers. It is defined as “computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions”. AC enables investigation and understanding of the relation between human emotions and health as well as application of assistive and useful technologies in the medical domain. Objectives: 1) To review the general state of the art in AC and its applications in medicine, and 2) to establish synergies between the research communities of AC and medical informatics. Methods: Aspects related to the human affective state as a determinant of the human health are discussed, coupled with an illustration of significant AC research and related literature output. Moreover, affective communication channels are described and their range of application fields is explored through illustrative examples. Results: The presented conferences, European research projects and research publications illustrate the recent increase of interest in the AC area by the medical community. Tele-home healthcare, AmI, ubiquitous monitoring, e-learning and virtual communities with emotionally expressive characters for elderly or impaired people are few areas where the potential of AC has been realized and applications have emerged. Conclusions: A number of gaps can potentially be overcome through the synergy of AC and medical informatics. The application of AC technologies parallels the advancement of the existing state of the art and the introduction of new methods. The amount of work and projects reviewed in this paper witness an ambitious and optimistic synergetic future of the affective medicine field

Contours of Inclusion: Inclusive Arts Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this publication is to share models and case examples of the process of inclusive arts curriculum design and evaluation. The first section explains the conceptual and curriculum frameworks that were used in the analysis and generation of the featured case studies (i.e. Understanding by Design, Differentiated Instruction, and Universal Design for Learning). Data for the cases studies was collected from three urban sites (i.e. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston) and included participant observations, student and teacher interviews, curriculum documentation, digital documentation of student learning, and transcripts from discussion forum and teleconference discussions from a professional learning community.The initial case studies by Glass and Barnum use the curricular frameworks to analyze and understand what inclusive practices look like in two case studies of arts-in-education programs that included students with disabilities. The second set of precedent case studies by Kronenberg and Blair, and Jenkins and Agois Hurel uses the frameworks to explain their process of including students by providing flexible arts learning options to support student learning of content standards. Both sets of case studies illuminate curricular design decisions and instructional strategies that supported the active engagement and learning of students with disabilities in educational settings shared with their peers. The second set of cases also illustrate the reflective process of using frameworks like Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to guide curricular design, responsive instructional differentiation, and the use of the arts as a rich, meaningful, and engaging option to support learning. Appended are curriculum design and evaluation tools. (Individual chapters contain references.

Non-home: A Theoretical Approach to Migrants' Dwellings

In this article we introduce the notion of non-home as an attempt of meaningful insight into the migrants' dwelling constructed from elements of different provenance, depending on tenants housing experiences, definitions and the very materiality of a living space. In developing the idea of a non-home we refer to the theoretical concepts of non-places and heterotopias

Teachers’ Response to Infants’ Nonverbal Communication and Use of Response to Facilitate a Dialogue

Beginning with birth, typically developing children use strategies to communicate, and the functions of their language change with maturation and interaction. Since communication cannot exist if both parties do not participate, it is important to not only study the ability of the child, but also the behavior of the adult. Numerous studies have examined the behavior of the parent or other domestic adult, but few have included the study of teacher behaviors. This study investigated teachers’ response to four types of nonverbal communication attempts made by infants. The gestures included: deictic, affect signaling, object-related, and conventional. The type of response was also documented as facilitating dialogue or discouraging dialogue. Thirty infant teachers and/or teacher assistants from 11 centers in Northeast Tennessee were videotaped for 30 minutes. Videos were coded to determine which of the defined functions teachers were most likely to respond to and if the response facilitated or discouraged dialogue. The results showed that overall, teachers responded to 25% of nonverbal attempts; 75% of the infants’ nonverbal attempts teacher offered a non-facilitative response or missed the gesture. Pearson correlations determined that there were relationships between children’s attempt to communicate and teachers’ response in all four types of nonverbal communication, including deictic, r (30) = .659, p = .000; affect signaling, r (30) = .917, p = .000; object-related, r (30) =.848, p = .000; and conventional, r (30) = .794, p = .000. There were several relationships between the number of nonverbal attempts by children and teachers offering a facilitative responses including affect signaling, r (30) = .776, p = .000; object-related, r (30) = .635, p = .000; and conventional, r (30) = .514, p = .004, but not with deictic attempts. There were relationships between the number of nonverbal attempts by children and teachers offering discouraging responses in all 4 types of nonverbal language, including deictic, r (30) = .706, p = .000; affect signaling, r (30) = .630, p = .000; object-related, r (30) = .582, p = .001; and conventional, r (30) = .439, p = .015

Integrating Decision-Making Support in Geocollaboration Tools

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication

In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion

Understanding 3D mid-air hand gestures with interactive surfaces and displays: a systematic literature review

3D gesture based systems are becoming ubiquitous and there are many mid-air hand gestures that exist for interacting with digital surfaces and displays. There is no well defined gesture set for 3D mid-air hand gestures which makes it difficult to develop applications that have consistent gestures. To understand what gestures exist we conducted the first comprehensive systematic literature review on mid-air hand gestures following existing research methods. The results of the review identified 65 papers where the mid-air hand gestures supported tasks for selection, navigation, and manipulation. We also classified the gestures according to a gesture classification scheme and identified how these gestures have been empirically evaluated. The results of the review provide a richer understanding of what mid-air hand gestures have been designed, implemented, and evaluated in the literature which can help developers design better user experiences for digital interactive surfaces and displays

Gesture in multimodal language learner interaction via videoconferencing on mobile devices

This thesis focuses on how adult English language learners exploit and experience gesture while communicating with one another via mobile technologies. Mobiles create opportunities for multimodal language learning beyond the classroom (Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2017), however, modes such as gesture are mediated and transformed by technology in complex ways (Hampel & Stickler, 2012). In a small-scale qualitative study, learners from a range of nationalities who were studying on language programmes in the UK were connected in dyads via Skype videoconferencing (VC) in order to complete information gap tasks using tablets, 2-in-1 devices, and smartphones. These communicative tasks had been intentionally designed around a diversity of informal ‘settings’ (Benson, 2011) which included cafés, museums, and historical buildings. Following the tasks, participants took part in stimulated recall interviews in order to reflect on their multimodal forms of communication. This exploratory, qualitative study examines gesture from a theoretical perspective which links the mode to spoken language (Kendon, 2004; McNeill, 1992; Norris, 2004) and positions gesture within the wider framework of the negotiation of meaning (Varonis & Gass, 1985). As the role of speech-associated gestures within language learning via technology has not been widely researched, an interdisciplinary methodology had to be designed to analyse the video recorded data from the learners’ tasks. This is based on transcription procedures from gesture-speech analysis (McNeill, 1992; McNeill & Duncan, 2000). As gesture in this study is understood as being closely aligned to speech, a multimodal unit of analysis was combined with the Varonis and Gass (1985) framework of the negotiation of meaning. The multimodal method allowed for the categorisation and analysis of gesture to investigate how learners may co-orchestrate the two modes in relationship to their deployment of mobile technologies from beyond the classroom. The participants were asked to reflect on their interactions from multimodal perspectives and interview data were triangulated with the task performances. Theoretical and pedagogical conclusions are drawn as to the manner in which learners exploit gesture as an integral part of the negotiation of meaning

Gesture analysis and organizational research : the development and application of a protocol for naturalistic settings

Gestures are an underresearched but potentially significant aspect of organizational conduct that is relevant to researchers across a range of theoretical and empirical domains. In engaging the cross-disciplinary field of gesture studies, we develop and apply a protocol for analyzing gestures produced in naturalistic settings during on-going streams of talk and embodied activity. Analyzing video recordings of entrepreneurial investor pitches, we work through this protocol and demonstrate its usefulness. While doing so, we also explore methodological tensions in gesture studies and draw out methodological arguments as they relate to the analysis of these fleeting and often intricate bodily movements. The paper contributes a generally applicable protocol for the analysis of gestures in naturalistic settings, and it assesses the methodological implications of this protocol both for research on entrepreneurship and new venture creation, and for management and organization research more generally