Multicriteria Decision Analysis and Conversational Agents for children with autism

Conversational agents has emerged as a new means of communication and social skills training for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), encouraging academia, industry, and therapeutic centres to investigate it further. This paper aims to develop a methodological framework based on Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to identify the best , i.e. the most effective, conversational agent for this target group. To our knowledge, it is the first time the MCDA is applied to this specific domain. Our contribution is twofold: i) our method is an extension of traditional MCDA and we exemplify how to apply it to decision making process related to CA for person with autism: a methodological result that would be adopted for a broader range of technologies for person with impairments similar to ASD; ii) our results, based on the above mentioned method, suggest that Embodied Conversational Agent is most appropriate conversational technology to interact with children with ASD

Enactivism, other minds, and mental disorders

Although enactive approaches to cognition vary in terms of their character and scope, all endorse several core claims. The first is that cognition is tied to action. The second is that cognition is composed of more than just in-the-head processes; cognitive activities are externalized via features of our embodiment and in our ecological dealings with the people and things around us. I appeal to these two enactive claims to consider a view called “direct social perception” : the idea that we can sometimes perceive features of other minds directly in the character of their embodiment and environmental interactions. I argue that if DSP is true, we can probably also perceive certain features of mental disorders as well. I draw upon the developmental psychologist Daniel Stern’s notion of “forms of vitality”—largely overlooked in these debates—to develop this idea, and I use autism as a case study. I argue further that an enactive approach to DSP can clarify some ways we play a regulative role in shaping the temporal and phenomenal character of the disorder in question, and it may therefore have practical significance for both the clinical and therapeutic encounter

A theoretical and practical approach to a persuasive agent model for change behaviour in oral care and hygiene

There is an increased use of the persuasive agent in behaviour change interventions due to the agent‘s features of sociable, reactive, autonomy, and proactive. However, many interventions have been unsuccessful, particularly in the domain of oral care. The psychological reactance has been identified as one of the major reasons for these unsuccessful behaviour change interventions. This study proposes a formal persuasive agent model that leads to psychological reactance reduction in order to achieve an improved behaviour change intervention in oral care and hygiene. Agent-based simulation methodology is adopted for the development of the proposed model. Evaluation of the model was conducted in two phases that include verification and validation. The verification process involves simulation trace and stability analysis. On the other hand, the validation was carried out using user-centred approach by developing an agent-based application based on belief-desire-intention architecture. This study contributes an agent model which is made up of interrelated cognitive and behavioural factors. Furthermore, the simulation traces provide some insights on the interactions among the identified factors in order to comprehend their roles in behaviour change intervention. The simulation result showed that as time increases, the psychological reactance decreases towards zero. Similarly, the model validation result showed that the percentage of respondents‘ who experienced psychological reactance towards behaviour change in oral care and hygiene was reduced from 100 percent to 3 percent. The contribution made in this thesis would enable agent application and behaviour change intervention designers to make scientific reasoning and predictions. Likewise, it provides a guideline for software designers on the development of agent-based applications that may not have psychological reactance

Implementation Intentions: Examining the Social Implications of Establishing Metacognitive Processes which Bypass the Neuropsychological Planning Fallacy of Self-Employed Adult Individuals with Asperger\u27s Syndrome

This final project will be examining how to bypass the neuropsychological cognitive executive functioning errors that lead to a planning fallacy, a continual underestimation of task duration even with knowledge of correct estimation, of adult individuals with Asperger\u27s Syndrome. Due to these errors, many of these individuals look to self-employment as an economic solution to the rigid constraints of the existing occupational environment. Although self-employment is a viable option, the errors need to be corrected for successful ventures. The proper means to correct these errors is through the use of metacognitive processes called implementation intentions; which create concrete plans of action to facilitate goal oriented behavior. The implications of this research suggest that these individuals can create more appropriate cognitive and metacognitive functioning skills that enable them to interact and work more productively and efficiently within their families and communities, benefiting psychologically, sociologically, and economically

"I Want This, I Want That": a discursive analysis of mental state terms in family interaction

Using the theoretical approach of discursive psychology, this thesis examines the interactive uses of mental state talk, in particular the term want , in everyday family interaction. In mainstream cognitive psychology mental state terms are examined as words which signify internal referents. How individuals come to competently participate in social interaction is formulated as a problem of how individual, isolated minds come to understand the contents of other minds. This thesis challenges these individualistic notions and examines notions of wanting as interactionally managed participants concerns. The data are taken from two sources; a set of video recordings taken from a series of fly-on-the-wall documentary programmes which each focus on a particular family and videotapes of mealtimes recorded by three families. Recordings were initially transcribed verbatim and sections related to the emerging themes within the thesis were subsequently transcribed using the Jefferson notation system. These transcripts were then analysed, alongside repeated viewings of the video recordings. The thesis considers a range of analytic themes, which are interlinked via one of the primary research questions, which has been to examine how, and to what end, speakers routinely deploy notions of wanting in everyday talk-in-interaction. A major theme has been to highlight inherent problems with work in social cognition which uses experimental tasks to examine children s Theory of Mind and understanding of desires . I argue that the assumptions of this work are a gross simplification of the meaning wanting for both children and adults. A further theme has been to examine the sequential organisation of directives and requests in both adults and children s talk. Finally, I examine speakers practices for rejecting a proposal regarding their actions and for denying a formulation of their motivations by a co-interactant. The conclusions of the thesis show that expressions of wanting are practical expressions which work within a flow of interactional and deontic considerations and that making claims regarding one s own or others wants is entirely a social matter. I argue that rather than being examined for what they may reveal about the mind , mental state terms may be fruitfully examined as interactional matters

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY IN RELATION TO THE EXISTENCE OF HUMAN BEING

The analysis of mental disorders necessarily requires careful and multilayered reflection. Psychiatry is indeed focused on complex phenomena and symptoms that can be only partly traced back to merely quantitative objectifiable data. This is the reason why we witness a growing methodological and conceptual \u201cmutual enlightenment\u201d between philosophy and psychiatry. Whereas philosophy offers notions that can help to take into account also the qualitative aspects and the lived experiences of pathologies, clinical psychiatry seems to represent one of the most relevant practical fields for philosophy to test its explan- atory capacity in relation to its many important issues. The history of phenomenological psychopathology, in particular, shows that philosophers have demonstrated a keen interest in the practical consequences of these issues in the field of clinical psychopathology

A transdisciplinary study of embodiment in HCI, AI and New Media.

The aim of this thesis is to report on a transdisciplinary approach, regarding the complexity of thinking about human embodiment in relation to machine embodiment. A practical dimension of this thesis is to elicit some principles for the design and evaluation of virtual embodiment. The transdisciplinary approach suggests, firstly, that a single discipline or reality is, on its own, not sufficient to explain the complexity and dynamism of the embodied interaction between the human and machine. Secondly, the thesis argues for thinking of transdisciplinary research as a process of individuation, becoming or transduction, that is, as a process of mediation between heterogeneous approaches rather than perceiving research as a stabilized cognitive schema designed to accumulate new outcomes to the already-there reality. Arguing for going beyond the individualized approaches to embodiment, this thesis analyzes three cases where the problems that appear in one case are resolved through the analysis of the following one. Consisting of three phases, this research moves from objective scientific ¿reality¿ to more phenomenological, subjective and complex realities. The first study employs a critical review of embodied conversational agents in human¿computer interaction (HCI) in a learning context using a comparative meta-analysis. Meta-analysis was applied because most of the studies for evaluating embodiment are experimental. A learning context was selected because the number of studies is suitable for meta-analysis and the findings could be generalized to other contexts. The analysis reveals that there is no ¿persona effect¿, that is, the expected positive effect of virtual embodiment on the participant¿s affective, perceptive and cognitive measures. On the contrary, it shows the reduction of virtual embodiment to image and a lack of consideration for the participant¿s embodiment and interaction, in addition to theoretical and methodological shortcomings. The second phase solves these problems by focusing on Mark Hansen¿s phenomenological account of embodiment in new media. The investigation shows that Hansen improves on the HCI account by focusing on the participant¿s dynamic interaction with new media. Nevertheless, his views of embodied perception and affection are underpinned by a subjective patriarchal account leading to object/subject and body/work polarizations. The final phase resolves this polarization by analyzing the controversial work of Alan Turing on intelligent machinery. The research provides a different reading of the Turing Machine based on Simondon¿s concept of individuation, repositioning its materiality from the abstract non-existent to the actual-virtual realm and investigating the reasons for its abstraction. It relates the emergence of multiple human¿machine encounters in Turing¿s work to the complex counter-becoming of what it describes as ¿the Turing Machine compound¿.Ministry of Higher Education in the Sultanate of Oma

Moving Ourselves, Moving Others

The close relationship between motion (bodily movement) and emotion (feelings) is not an etymological coincidence. While moving ourselves, we move others; in observing others move – we are moved ourselves. The fundamentally interpersonal nature of mind and language has recently received due attention, but the key role of (e)motion in this context has remained something of a blind spot. The present book rectifies this gap by gathering contributions from leading philosophers, psychologists and linguists working in the area. Framed by an introducing prologue and a summarizing epilogue the volume elaborates a dynamical, active view of emotion, along with an affect-laden view of motion – and explores their significance for consciousness, intersubjectivity, and language. As such, it contributes to the emerging interdisciplinary field of mind science, transcending hitherto dominant computationalist and cognitivist approaches