The potential of multimedia art to stimulate personal expression of, and reflection on childhood experience

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Effects of Blue Light on Dynamic Vision

Dynamic vision is crucial to not only animals’ hunting behaviors but also human activities, and yet little is known about how to enhance it, except for extensive trainings like athletics do. Exposure to blue light has been shown to enhance human alertness (Chellappa et al., 2011), perhaps through intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), which are sensitive to motion perception as revealed by animal studies. However, it remains unknown whether blue light can enhance human dynamic vision, a motion-related ability. We conducted five experiments under blue or orange light to test three important components of dynamic vision: eye pursuit accuracy (EPA, Experiment 1), kinetic visual acuity (KVA, Experiment 1 and 2), and dynamic visual acuity (DVA, Experiment 3–5). EPA was measured by the distance between the position of the fixation and the position of the target when participants tracked a target dot. In the KVA task, participants reported three central target numbers (randomly chosen from 0 to 9) moving toward participants in the depth plane, with speed threshold calculated by a staircase procedure. In the DVA task, three numbers were presented along the meridian line on the same depth plane, with motion direction (Experiment 3) and difficulty level (Experiment 4) manipulated, and a blue light filter lens was used to test the ipRGCs contribution (Experiment 5). Results showed that blue light enhanced EPA and DVA, but reduced KVA. Further, DVA enhancement was modulated by difficulty level: blue light enhancement effect was found only with hard task in the downward motion in Experiment 3 and with the low contrast target in Experiment 4. However, this blue light enhancement effect was not caused by mechanism of the ipRGCs, at least not in the range we tested. In this first study demonstrating the relationship between different components of dynamic vision and blue light, our findings that DVA can be enhanced under blue light with hard but not easy task indicate that blue light can enhance dynamic visual discrimination when needed

Needs and demands for community psychiatric rehabilitation programs from the perspectives of patients and caregivers

[[abstract]]This study interviewed 182 pairs of patients and caregivers to explore the needs and demands for community programs for patients with chronic mental illness and to detect the factors associated with them. The most needed and demanded programs were structured day services (69.2 vs. 78.6%), club house (71.4 vs. 74.2%), and caregiver support (72.5 vs. 74.7%). The needs and demands perceived by both patients and caregivers ranged from 3.3 to 31.9%, while those perceived by either patients or caregivers ranged from 25.8 to 72.5%. Needs and demands for individual programs were higher in caregivers (67, 65.9%) than in patients (41.2, 42.9%) and the proportion of demand (42.3-78.6%) for the eight programs was greater than the need (25.8-72.5%) for programs. The results showed that married and younger caregivers needed and demanded active community programs and the patients with a higher level of education favored a club house with high autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Community Mental Health Journal is the property of Springer Science & Business Media B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract

Doing care work for older people : work identities, motivations and barriers to job satisfaction

There is an increasing care demand for care home workers have a significant role in meeting residents’ care needs from the admission to a care home up to the end of life. However, there is persistent high care home worker turnover that can negatively impact the quality of care residents receive and care workers’ wellbeing. This thesis aimed to explore care home workers’ perceptions, experiences, and motivations of continuing their work role through the lens of self-determination theory (SDT). The first qualitative study (n=22) explored care workers’ perceptions and experiences of providing care for residents from the admission to the care home up to the end of life. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Participants’ accounts reflected that social interaction had a significant role in facilitating the development of their work identities and encouraging them to remain employed in the care homes. The second study (quantitative, n=207) that built on the findings of study 1 investigated how care home workers’ perceptions towards their work roles, psychosocial attributes, psychological needs, and motivation influence their organisational commitment and job satisfaction using structural equation modelling. The study suggested a contextual significance of satisfying care workers’ psychological needs which then shapes their motivation and influences their organisational commitment and job satisfaction. The third study (qualitative, n=10) that complimented the findings of study 1 and 2 was to understand managers’ perspectives on care workers’ support needs and how they provide support to their care workers in the care homes using thematic analysis. Participants’ accounts reflected that meeting care workers’ autonomy need and enhance the effectiveness of communication between managers and care workers helped convey care home values and the meanings of care work to care workers, foster a positive work environment, and improve teamwork. This thesis contributes to the theoretical understanding of care workers’ work identities and motivations of continuing their care worker role. As a career that is dominated by people and interactions with people, social interaction has a significant role in facilitating care workers to establish their work identities and implement role expectations and the meanings of care work in their care practice, satisfying their psychological needs at work, and experiencing a higher organisational commitment and job satisfaction. This thesis highlights the significance of the consistency in management practices which helps eliminate the incongruences care home workers experienced between their work identities and the real job of caring and facilitate the development and maintenance of a stable and positive care home culture. This thesis has the potential to inform or devise interventions with evidence-based information to enhance care workers’ retention and wellbeing

Factors related to perceived needs of primary caregivers of patients with schizophrenia

[[abstract]]Background/Purpose: Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness, and sufferers are usually dependent on family, primary caregivers in particular. The present study was designed to assess the perceived needs of caregivers so that adequate services can be provided for them in the community. Methods: A total of 177 primary caregivers were interviewed with the structured burden-and-need schedules to determine their perceived needs, and the related clinical and demographic factors. Four-teen perceived needs were identified and classified into different need clusters using the generalized association plots. A multiple regression of logistic model was adopted to explore the relationships between the related factors and perceived needs. Results: Four clusters of perceived needs were identified, which included assistant patient care (77.6%), access to relevant information (66.1%), societal support (68.2%), and burden release (27.2%). These needs were significantly related to number of admissions, duration of illness, relationship between caregiver and patient, and education level of the caregiver. Conclusion: Four clusters of caregivers' perceived needs were identified and found to be related to psychopathologic and demographic factors. These data are of value in designing appropriate community psychiatric programs to improve the quality of care and enhance the capacity of primary caregivers to care for patients

A Study on the Forms and User's Behaviors of the Public Seats in National Taipei University of Technology

AbstractTo the students, school is the main living and activity space in the school semester, however, it was found that students only stay in the classroom to communicate with others using 3C hardware, students rarely go to outdoor space to have exchange with peers or teachers. In this study, starting from student's point of view, appropriateness and form of user's experience are used to investigate the form and user's demand and interactive behavior of outdoor public seat in the campus of National Taipei University of Technology. The implementation way can be divided into three stages: (1) Analyze the present public seats in the campus. (2) Questionnaire is used to investigate the form of the public seats in the campus and user's experience. (3) Through workshop, QFD method is used to investigate important design factors of user's demand and seat function. The main issuance targets of the questionnaires are students teaching staff of National Taipei University of Technology, and it comes to a total of 30 copies. The participating targets of the workshop are mainly five graduate students of the graduate institute of innovative design. Finally, the following research results are achieved: (1) Seat surrounding a tree is the most popular type of seat, people is willing to use it, the next is seat of single-person form. (2) Seat of multi-person form is the most comfort type of seat. It is including table and seats, people able to work comfortably and hands are gotten supporting. (3) User's demand perspective: Currently, important demand factors recognized by users are easy-to-clean, changeable user's scenario and easy-to-move, the next are appearance, shape, color, fun and interactivity, etc. (4) Product's function perspective: Currently, the first priority considering design factors in functionality are lighting function, easy-to-maintain, can-be-assembled and light weight material, the next is charging function and weather resistant material

The Influence of Parent-child Toys and Time of Playing Together on Attachment

AbstractAs grandparent rearing is growing year by year in Taiwan's dual-earner family, it raises a critical issue (how parents can efficiently accompany with their children. The study investigates in the influences of parent-child toys and time of playing together on attachment. The study is divided into two parts. (1) Literature Review. The relationship between playing together as a family and theory of attachment. (2) Questionnaire Analysis. The questionnaire focuses on the influences of different types of parent-child toys and the time of playing together for age 2-6 kids on attachment. Choosing 20 questions from attachment Q-set, preschool education specialists design this questionnaire. Questionnaires are distributed in December 2014, and 30 of them are collected. Results are as follows. (1) Instead of whole day as we imaging, the average time of playing together is 15minutes each time, resulting in high level of attachment. (2) Symbolic play materials. Children play stuffed toys, dolls, and toys alone make them feel secured even if not playing together with parents. (3) Fluid-construction play materials. Playing dough or drawing pictures with children for 15-45minutes not only enhances parent-child attachment but also makes children trust people easily and fearless of many things. (4) Structured-construction play material. Play building block, Lego, puzzle with children helps and encourages them to explore learning. In the security attachment, it will inspire children to develop positive attitudes. (5) Sensori-motor play materials. Accompanying with children for playing sliding slide and climbing-frame for 1 hour generates high level of attachment, making them not fear of unfamiliar environment. (6) Sign play-numbers and letters. Playing educational toys together for 60 minutes trains children to think and judge, allowing them to quickly adapt to changeable environment

Cultivating Social Capital through Interactivity on Social Network Sites

The Internet has changed from an information tool to a social tool. More and more people use social networking sites such as Facebook to build and maintain numerous interpersonal relationships. The benefits of online social interaction can be manifested in bridging and bonding social capital. This study examined how the four dimensions of perceived interactivity (control, synchronicity, surveillance, and social bandwidth) affected users’ bridging and bonding social capital. Moreover, this study also assessed how the effects of perceived interactivity on bridging and bonding social capital were mediated by communication quality and social relationship support. This study recruited 422 respondents to participate in the survey. The first results showed that three out of four dimensions of perceived interactivity (control, synchronicity, and social bandwidth) positively influenced bridging and bonding social capital, whereas perceived surveillance negatively affected bridging social capital. Moreover, they have a stronger effect on bridging than on bonding social capital. The second findings revealed that the relationships between the two dimensions of perceived interactivity (synchronicity and social bandwidth) and bridging social capital were mediated by social relationship support