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

Close, but not close enough? Audience’s reactions to domesticated distant suffering in international news coverage

The interest in audience responses to mediated distant suffering has been growing in the last decade. Earlier research about the mediation of distant suffering was often morally or theoretically based, or textually informed and recent empirical research has often focused on how the theories and text–based studies resonate with empirical research of the audience. Earlier text–based research has found that journalists domesticate news about distant events to bring such events closer by and thus make them more relevant and appealing. Four types to domesticate news about distant suffering were found; emotional domestication, aid–driven domestication, familiarizing the unfamiliar, and “what are the stakes”. These domestication strategies aim to establish a link between the distant event and the national or local context of the viewer to bring distant events closer to home and to invite the audience to care. Knowledge about the actual audience’s reactions towards domesticated news is lacking. Therefore, central to this study is whether, and how domestication strategies on the production side of the news, are recognized and if these, or other domesticating strategies are employed by the audience to be caring and morally engaged towards the distant victims. In order to study this we conducted ten focus groups (N=51) in January and February 2016, where we showed a news item about the earthquake in Nepal which happened nine months before. The empirical analysis is informed by concepts from the fields of moral and social psychology. For one, according to social psychological traditions, differentiation is made between people’s cognitive (rational) and affective (emotional) reactions towards their social environment. In addition, and more specifically, we used the concepts empathy and sympathy, defined in the field of moral– and social psychology to structurally analyze people’s reaction towards the mediated distant suffering. We also used the social psychologically informed concept of ‘denial’ to study people’s less caring reactions towards the mediated suffering. Based on the empirical results, we propose a two–flow model of domestication, consisting of first–level domestication on the production side by journalists, and second–level domestication where the audience themselves uses strategies of domestication to make sense of distant suffering. In addition, not all domestication strategies were equally, or equally successfully employed by the audience for a better understanding of– or moral engagement towards, the suffering

Effective Affective User Interface Design in Games

It is proposed that games, which are designed to generate positive affect, are most successful when they facilitate flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1992). Flow is a state of concentration, deep enjoyment, and total absorption in an activity. The study of games, and a resulting understanding of flow in games can inform the design of nonleisure software for positive affect. The paper considers the ways in which computer games contravene Nielsen’s guidelines for heuristic evaluation (Nielsen and Molich 1990) and how these contraventions impact on flow. The paper also explores the implications for research that stem from the differences between games played on a personal computer and games played on a dedicated console. This research takes important initial steps towards defining how flow in computer games can inform affective design

Negotiating cultural difference in everyday life : some insights for inclusionary local governance

With the waning of state-sponsored multiculturalism, local governments in Australia have assumed leadership and responsibility for establishing and maintaining collaborative relationships with stakeholders to promote diverse and inclusive cities. Engaging with residents often through consultation processes and interacting with key institutions, local governments aim to value local knowledge and mobilise citizen participation. This social interactive approach to building local knowledge in places officially and popularly identified as socially disadvantaged and culturally diverse, however, is fraught with interethnic tensions if cultural practices unintentionally privi&Igrave;ege whiteness. In this paper I argue that such tensions can also give rise to moments of affective ambivalence that ate productive if it leads to the acknowledgement and questioning of white privilege within the formal agencies of government. Such questioning provides the possibility to value the voices of local residents and engage in meaningful intercultural dialogue. This paper draws on indepth interviews with planners, elected local councillors and residents in the City of Greater Dandenong, Melbourne, to illustrate the potential that the affective dimension of living with cultural diversity has in building governance capacity and inclusive understandings of citizenship.<br /

Students’ attitudes to practical work by age and subject

This article reports on a study into students’ attitudes to practical work. The findings suggest that students’ attitudes differ according to their age and the particular science where the practical work is conducted. The implication is that teachers should be more aware of how students’ attitudes to practical work change as lessons move further away from a focus on the enjoyment of science towards one that is examination-orientated. Simply doing the same amount of, and adopting the same approach to, practical work is unlikely to foster positive student attitudes towards practical work in all three sciences

Ubiquitous emotion-aware computing

Emotions are a crucial element for personal and ubiquitous computing. What to sense and how to sense it, however, remain a challenge. This study explores the rare combination of speech, electrocardiogram, and a revised Self-Assessment Mannequin to assess people’s emotions. 40 people watched 30 International Affective Picture System pictures in either an office or a living-room environment. Additionally, their personality traits neuroticism and extroversion and demographic information (i.e., gender, nationality, and level of education) were recorded. The resulting data were analyzed using both basic emotion categories and the valence--arousal model, which enabled a comparison between both representations. The combination of heart rate variability and three speech measures (i.e., variability of the fundamental frequency of pitch (F0), intensity, and energy) explained 90% (p < .001) of the participants’ experienced valence--arousal, with 88% for valence and 99% for arousal (ps < .001). The six basic emotions could also be discriminated (p < .001), although the explained variance was much lower: 18–20%. Environment (or context), the personality trait neuroticism, and gender proved to be useful when a nuanced assessment of people’s emotions was needed. Taken together, this study provides a significant leap toward robust, generic, and ubiquitous emotion-aware computing

Theory of Robot Communication: II. Befriending a Robot over Time

In building on theories of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Human-Robot Interaction, and Media Psychology (i.e. Theory of Affective Bonding), the current paper proposes an explanation of how over time, people experience the mediated or simulated aspects of the interaction with a social robot. In two simultaneously running loops, a more reflective process is balanced with a more affective process. If human interference is detected behind the machine, Robot-Mediated Communication commences, which basically follows CMC assumptions; if human interference remains undetected, Human-Robot Communication comes into play, holding the robot for an autonomous social actor. The more emotionally aroused a robot user is, the more likely they develop an affective relationship with what actually is a machine. The main contribution of this paper is an integration of Computer-Mediated Communication, Human-Robot Communication, and Media Psychology, outlining a full-blown theory of robot communication connected to friendship formation, accounting for communicative features, modes of processing, as well as psychophysiology.Comment: Hoorn, J. F. (2018). Theory of robot communication: II. Befriending a robot over time. arXiv:cs, 2502572(v1), 1-2

Inclusion of pupils perceived as experiencing social and emotional behavioural difficulties (SEBD) : affordances and constraints

This paper takes as its principal theme barriers to the inclusion of pupils perceived as experiencing social and emotional behavioural difficulties (SEBD) and how these might be overcome. It draws upon an evaluative case study of an initiative, devised by the author, to support pupils - the Support Group Initiative (SGI) - which was conducted over a five-year period in a Scottish Secondary School situated in an area of multiple deprivation. The central focus of the discussion is the range of variables that impacted upon pupil outcomes, illustrating the ways in which these variables acted as affordances or constraints in the pursuit of inclusive practice. The paper takes as its starting point the contested nature of inclusion and introduces, briefly, the Scottish policy context as it pertains to inclusion before exploring the nature of the problem - the barriers to the inclusion of and the difficulties presented by the inclusion of pupils perceived as having SEBD, as discussed in the literature. The findings of the study are discussed in relation to central themes - the ethos of the Support Group; the process of re-signification through which pupils are enabled to effect improvement; the classroom context; and wider variables relating to school policy, practice, ethos and the management of change. The paper concludes by exploring what inclusion has meant to the pupils involved within the intervention, summarising the affordances and constraints to its realisation, before reflecting upon the significance of the study