Associations between inattention and impulsivity ADHD symptoms and disordered eating risk in a community sample of young adults

BACKGROUND: Symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and trait impulsivity have been associated with disordered eating but are seldom assessed in community studies, or longitudinally and little is known about the mediating mechanisms. METHODS: We tested associations between ADHD symptoms and disordered eating cross-sectionally and between trait impulsivity and disordered eating longitudinally. We utilised data from a normative cohort of young adults (642 participants: 65% female, M(age) = 23 years). Participants were classified as high risk or low risk for disordered eating using the SCOFF instrument. In the first two steps of both cross-sectional and longitudinal hierarchical logistic regression models, demographics and covariates were entered. For the cross-sectional regression, Adult ADHD self-report scale (ASRS) scores, separated into inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive symptoms, were entered in the third step. In a separate longitudinal model, Barratt impulsivity scale subscales (attentional, motor and non-planning impulsivity) were entered in the third step. Depression, as assessed by the moods and feelings questionnaire (MFQ), was examined as a mediator. RESULTS: Cross-sectionally, sex, MFQ score and inattentive symptoms predicted disordered eating risk (model R(2) = 20%). Longitudinally, sex, MFQ score and attentional impulsivity predicted disordered eating risk (model R(2) = 16%). The relationship between inattentive symptoms and the disordered eating risk was partially mediated by MFQ score, whereas the relationship between attentional impulsivity and the disordered eating risk was fully mediated by MFQ scores. CONCLUSIONS: These data highlight (1) a specific role for inattentive symptoms of ADHD and (2) the importance of both depression and impulsivity in predicting eating disorder risk

Future Research Directions for Innovating Pedagogy

A series of reports on Innovating Pedagogy were launched in 2012 to look at the trends that show how practitioners may engage in innovation in pedagogy. This paper looks at the latest set of trends, and highlights four 2015 trends that seem particularly rich for researchers to explore in the next five years

Designing assisted living technologies 'in the wild' : preliminary experiences with cultural probe methodology

Background There is growing interest in assisted living technologies to support independence at home. Such technologies should ideally be designed ‘in the wild’ i.e. taking account of how real people live in real homes and communities. The ATHENE (Assistive Technologies for Healthy Living in Elders: Needs Assessment by Ethnography) project seeks to illuminate the living needs of older people and facilitate the co-production with older people of technologies and services. This paper describes the development of a cultural probe tool produced as part of the ATHENE project and how it was used to support home visit interviews with elders with a range of ethnic and social backgrounds, family circumstances, health conditions and assisted living needs. Method Thirty one people aged 60 to 98 were visited in their homes on three occasions. Following an initial interview, participants were given a set of cultural probe materials, including a digital camera and the ‘Home and Life Scrapbook’ to complete in their own time for one week. Activities within the Home and Life Scrapbook included maps (indicating their relationships to people, places and objects), lists (e.g. likes, dislikes, things they were concerned about, things they were comfortable with), wishes (things they wanted to change or improve), body outline (indicating symptoms or impairments), home plan (room layouts of their homes to indicate spaces and objects used) and a diary. After one week, the researcher and participant reviewed any digital photos taken and the content of the Home and Life Scrapbook as part of the home visit interview. Findings The cultural probe facilitated collection of visual, narrative and material data by older people, and appeared to generate high levels of engagement from some participants. However, others used the probe minimally or not at all for various reasons including limited literacy, physical problems (e.g. holding a pen), lack of time or energy, limited emotional or psychological resources, life events, and acute illness. Discussions between researchers and participants about the materials collected (and sometimes about what had prevented them completing the tasks) helped elicit further information relevant to assisted living technology design. The probe materials were particularly helpful when having conversations with non-English speaking participants through an interpreter. Conclusions Cultural probe methods can help build a rich picture of the lives and experiences of older people to facilitate the co-production of assisted living technologies. But their application may be constrained by the participant’s physical, mental and emotional capacity. They are most effective when used as a tool to facilitate communication and development of a deeper understanding of older people’s needs

The design-by-adaptation approach to universal access: learning from videogame technology

This paper proposes an alternative approach to the design of universally accessible interfaces to that provided by formal design frameworks applied ab initio to the development of new software. This approach, design-byadaptation, involves the transfer of interface technology and/or design principles from one application domain to another, in situations where the recipient domain is similar to the host domain in terms of modelled systems, tasks and users. Using the example of interaction in 3D virtual environments, the paper explores how principles underlying the design of videogame interfaces may be applied to a broad family of visualization and analysis software which handles geographical data (virtual geographic environments, or VGEs). One of the motivations behind the current study is that VGE technology lags some way behind videogame technology in the modelling of 3D environments, and has a less-developed track record in providing the variety of interaction methods needed to undertake varied tasks in 3D virtual worlds by users with varied levels of experience. The current analysis extracted a set of interaction principles from videogames which were used to devise a set of 3D task interfaces that have been implemented in a prototype VGE for formal evaluation

Places for News:A Situated Study of Context in News Consumption

This paper presents a qualitative study of contextual factors that affect news consumption on mobile devices. Participants reported their daily news consumption activities over a period of two weeks through a snippet-based diary and experience sampling study, followed by semi-structured exit interviews. Wunderlist, a commercially available task management application and note-taking software, was appropriated for data collection. Findings highlighted a range of contextual factors that are not accounted for in current ‘contextually-aware’ news delivery technologies, and could be developed to better adapt such technologies in the future. These contextual factors were segmented to four areas: triggers, positive/conducive factors, negative/distracting factors and barriers to use

HCI policy and the smart city

While the idea of the ‘Smart City’ has attracted increasing attention from academia, industry, and government this interest has largely had a technical and technological focus. This paper identifies some of the important political and policy challenges facing the idea, the discourse, of a ‘smart city’ as a means to optimise HCI input into the ‘smart city’ debate. It then addresses that gap by detailing a research project that explored how experts in smart city research and development in the UK context responded to this policy challenge. Experts were asked questions regarding their prior experience with the “smart city”, their understandings of what it means for a city to be smart, and what policy potentials they've recognised in the smart city. The paper analyses and offers a synthesis of the responses collected throughout the research with the current policies concerning various smart city proximity, thereby providing a critical assessment of the values underlying the smart city. The paper aims to explore and present some of the policy possibilities for UK smart cities that are potentially useful for politicians, policy makers, planners, academics, and technology companies. I believe that these perspectives for policy development can be used to inform responsible development, spatially and socially inclusive technologies, and ultimately more resilient and liveable cities

Bootstrapping Trust in Online Dating: Social Verification of Online Dating Profiles

Online dating is an increasingly thriving business which boasts billion-dollar revenues and attracts users in the tens of millions. Notwithstanding its popularity, online dating is not impervious to worrisome trust and privacy concerns raised by the disclosure of potentially sensitive data as well as the exposure to self-reported (and thus potentially misrepresented) information. Nonetheless, little research has, thus far, focused on how to enhance privacy and trustworthiness. In this paper, we report on a series of semi-structured interviews involving 20 participants, and show that users are significantly concerned with the veracity of online dating profiles. To address some of these concerns, we present the user-centered design of an interface, called Certifeye, which aims to bootstrap trust in online dating profiles using existing social network data. Certifeye verifies that the information users report on their online dating profile (e.g., age, relationship status, and/or photos) matches that displayed on their own Facebook profile. Finally, we present the results of a 161-user Mechanical Turk study assessing whether our veracity-enhancing interface successfully reduced concerns in online dating users and find a statistically significant trust increase.Comment: In Proceedings of Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC) Workshop on Usable Security (USEC), 201

Surfacing Small Worlds through Data-In-Place

We present findings from a five-week deployment of voting technologies in a city neighbourhood. Drawing on Marres’ (2012) work on material participation and Massey’s (2005) conceptualisation of space as dynamic, we designed the deployment such that the technologies (which were situated in residents’ homes, on the street, and available online) would work in concert, cutting across the neighbourhood to make visible, juxtapose and draw together the different ‘small worlds’ within it. We demonstrate how the material infrastructure of the voting devices set in motion particular processes and interpretations of participation, putting data in place in a way that had ramifications for the recognition of heterogeneity. We conclude that redistributing participation means not only opening up access, so that everyone can participate, or even providing a multitude of voting channels, so that people can participate in different ways. Rather, it means making visible multiplicity, challenging notions of similarity, and showing how difference may be productive

Perspectives on engineering more usable context-aware systems

The expectations of the abilities of context-aware systems (C-AS) often differ from reality. It becomes difficult to program contextual services that react adequately to the circumstantial needs of users as developers need to know, beforehand: the set of contextual states that may exist, what information could accurately determine a contextual state within that set, and what appropriate action should be taken in that particular state. Although there exist many frameworks and tools which support the design and implementation of C-AS, there is less conceptual help for developers to inform them of what contextual situations and services are appropriate (or feasible) to be implemented. This report reviews the state-of-the-art conceptualisation of context, which is more focused on the representational interpretation of the concept, to introduce a perspective that also acknowledges its interactional interpretation. A combination of revised and new definitions is introduced, which give key insights for the development of more useful C-AS. By acknowledging situations as a dynamic phenomenon that arises from action (interaction), and needs to be understood by the developers, it facilitates the analysis of these subjective interpretations into programming constructs (representation). The conceptualisation is also complemented with a set of guidelines for developers, an illustration of their usage, and a further discussion on the future directions for the engineering of more usable C-AS. The introduced conceptualisation is targeted towards the creation of an open-source tool supported framework for the engineering of C-AS