Gamification of a To-Do List with Emotional Reinforcement

Gamification can change how and why people interact with software. A common approach is to use quantitative feedback to give users a feeling of progress or achievement. There are, however, other ways to provide users with motivation or meaning during normal computer interactions, such as using emotional reinforcement. This could provide a powerful new tool to allow the positive effects of gamification to reach wider contexts. This paper investigates the design and evaluation of a mobile to-do list application, 'Tamu To-Do', which utilises gamified emotional reinforcement, as seen in Figure 1. A week-long field study (N=9) recorded user activity and impressions with the application. The results supported emotional reinforcement's potential as a gamification strategy to improve user motivation and engagement

Investigating emotionally resonant vibrations as a calming intervention for people with social anxiety

Social anxiety is a prevalent mental health concern and its adverse effects impact quality of life. Exposure Therapy is a key component of prominent psychotherapies for social anxiety, but adherence can be challenging and an intervention improving retention and accessibility would be valuable. Vibrotactile stimulation is a potential intervention for in vivo exposure as it can discreetly augment other objects or wearable devices during a social situation without interrupting conversation. This thesis explored the development of a calming vibrotactile intervention for social anxiety exposure therapy, prioritising the experiences of socially anxious users to inform the design and display of novel stimuli. As vibrotactile stimuli have a narrow affective range, novel emotionally resonant stimuli, which evoke real world sensations to elicit an associated emotional response (e.g. stimuli that evoke cat purring to remind users of past animal touch), were studied as an avenue to deliver calming experiences. Five studies and two surveys were conducted. Results from the first two experiments showed emotional responses to stimuli varied between participants, depending individual associations with real-world phenomena. Along with two surveys, this informed the investigation of the specific requirements and affective haptic preferences of socially anxious users. User suggestions and affective preferences from these surveys informed the testing of a wider selection of emotionally resonant cues in the third experiment, trialed alongside warm and cool thermal cues to observe impact on emotional resonance and response, although the effects were too minor to justify their future use. With a library of emotionally resonant stimuli validated, methods of delivering them to users was explored with participatory prototyping. Participants who reported high levels of social anxiety designed personalised comfort objects, then augmented them with stimuli. These designs informed the design of three prototype objects which were augmented with vibrations in a final between-groups study which assessed if they could reduce anxiety during a social exposure task. Participants in the treatment group held their choice of object and stimulus to during exposure and exhibited significantly more varied anxiety responses to the task than a control group, reporting that their objects were calming and helpful. These findings suggest that emotionally resonant vibrotactile cues can act as a calming intervention, but their efficacy requires personalisation and varies strongly per user. This thesis contributes novel understanding of the specific requirements of socially anxious users when interacting with affective haptics and pioneers a new category of calming vibrotactile stimuli, with demonstrable applicability in socially anxious settings

Increasing Individuals’ Economic Stability through Massachusetts’ Career and Technical Education

High-school based career and technical education (CTE) programs continue to grow, fueled by labor market demand and federal funding. Amid concerns over declining rates of economic mobility and stagnating earnings for low-wage workers, the academic landscape in America’s secondary schools now places extensive focus on workforce preparation as part of the curriculum. Nationally, CTE is the most popular type of elective taken by high school students, with roughly 80 percent of high school students taking at least one course. Using data from Massachusetts, researchers from the CTEx consortium estimated that students who participated in specialized CTE programs in high school had better attendance rates, were more likely to graduate from high school, were more likely to enroll in a two-year college, and earned more money in the seven years after leaving high school

Increasing Individuals’ Economic Stability through Massachusetts’ Career and Technical Education

High-school based career and technical education (CTE) programs continue to grow, fueled by labor market demand and federal funding. Amid concerns over declining rates of economic mobility and stagnating earnings for low-wage workers, the academic landscape in America’s secondary schools now places extensive focus on workforce preparation as part of the curriculum. Nationally, CTE is the most popular type of elective taken by high school students, with roughly 80 percent of high school students taking at least one course. Using data from Massachusetts, researchers from the CTEx consortium estimated that students who participated in specialized CTE programs in high school had better attendance rates, were more likely to graduate from high school, were more likely to enroll in a two-year college, and earned more money in the seven years after leaving high school.https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/gpl_reports/1037/thumbnail.jp

User Preferences for Calming Affective Haptic Stimuli in Social Settings

This paper presents a survey informing a user-first approach to designing calming affective haptic stimuli by eliciting user preferences in different social scenarios. Prior affective haptics research presented users with stimuli and recorded emotional responses. By contrast this work focuses on the sensations users wish to experience and how these can be simulated using haptics. The survey (n=81) investigated which users preferences in four social situations to reduce social anxiety. Using thematic analysis of responses we created a coding scheme of stimuli derived from real-world experiences to emulate with affective haptics. By cross-referencing these categories with affective haptics research, we provide recommendations to designers about which calming stimuli users wish to experience socially and how they can be implemented

Conducting and Mitigating Portable Thermal Imaging Attacks on User Authentication using AI-driven Methods

Thermal cameras have become portable enough to integrate into wearables, such as glasses, and can be used maliciously to infer passwords observing heat traces left on keyboards, keypads and screens. While prior work showed how AI-driven approaches can be used to further enhance the effectiveness of these attacks, we use similar approaches to detect vulnerable interfaces and obfuscate heat traces to defend against thermal attacks. At our Augmented Humans 2023 demo, attendees will have the chance to use a thermal camera to observe thermal traces on a keyboard, and observe how machine learning can both automatically identify keys pressed based and identify, then obfuscate, thermal images of a keyboard to prevent thermal attacks. This demo will provoke thought and discussion about the security risks presented by discrete, wearable thermal cameras and how these risks can be mitigated by both designers and users

Change Policy or Users? Mitigating the Security Risks of Thermal Attacks

Attacks on passwords by thermal cameras are a poignant example of how emerging technologies can pose unforeseen security risks. Despite being easy to perform and effective, thermal attacks are not commonly understood or counteracted, hence a strategy to mitigate this is required. In this paper, we propose an AI-driven strategy to obfuscate vulnerable interfaces in the view of thermal cameras automatically, then discuss the advantages and limitations of attempting to enforce such a system-centred solution as policy, versus instead attempting to shape user behaviour

Case Report Bilateral Vocal Cord Paralysis and Cervicolumbar Radiculopathy as the Presenting Paraneoplastic Manifestations of Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Case Report and Literature Review

Introduction. Bilateral vocal cord paralysis (BVCP) is a potential medical emergency. The Otolaryngologist plays a crucial role in the diagnosis and management of BVCP and must consider a broad differential diagnosis. We present a rare case of BVCP secondary to anti-Hu paraneoplastic syndrome. Case Presentation. A 58-year-old female presented to an Otolaryngology clinic with a history of progressive hoarseness and dysphagia. Flexible nasolaryngoscopy demonstrated BVCP. Cross-sectional imaging of the brain and vagus nerves was negative. An antiparaneoplastic antibody panel was positive for anti-Hu antibodies. This led to an endobronchial biopsy of a paratracheal lymph node, which confirmed the diagnosis of small cell lung cancer. Conclusion. Paraneoplastic neuropathy is a rare cause of BVCP and should be considered when more common pathologies are ruled out. This is the second reported case of BVCP as a presenting symptom of paraneoplastic syndrome secondary to small cell lung cancer

Multi-century trends to wetter winters and drier summers in the England and Wales precipitation series explained by observational and sampling bias in early records

Globally, few precipitation records extend to the 18th century. The England Wales Precipitation (EWP) series is a notable exception with continuous monthly records from 1766. EWP has found widespread use across diverse fields of research including trend detection, evaluation of climate model simulations, as a proxy for mid-latitude atmospheric circulation, a predictor in long-term European gridded precipitation data sets, the assessment of drought and extremes, tree-ring reconstructions and as a benchmark for other regional series. A key finding from EWP has been the multi-centennial trends towards wetter winters and drier summers. We statistically reconstruct seasonal EWP using independent, quality-assured temperature, pressure and circulation indices. Using a sleet and snow series for the UK derived by Profs. Gordon Manley and Elizabeth Shaw to examine winter reconstructions, we show that precipitation totals for pre-1870 winters are likely biased low due to gauge under-catch of snowfall and a higher incidence of snowfall during this period. When these factors are accounted for in our reconstructions, the observed trend to wetter winters in EWP is no longer evident. For summer, we find that pre-1820 precipitation totals are too high, likely due to decreasing network density and less certain data at key stations. A significant trend to drier summers is not robustly present in our reconstructions of the EWP series. While our findings are more certain for winter than summer, we highlight (a) that extreme caution should be exercised when using EWP to make inferences about multi-centennial trends, and; (b) that assessments of 18th and 19th Century winter precipitation should be aware of potential snow biases in early records. Our findings underline the importance of continual re-appraisal of established long-term climate data sets as new evidence becomes available. It is also likely that the identified biases in winter EWP have distorted many other long-term European precipitation series

Social work students on the island of Ireland: a cross-sectional survey

Understanding the characteristics, motivations, and experiences of student social workers is important to inform their professional education and support needs. To date, there has been relatively little research about social work students in Ireland, both North and South. This study reports on an all-Ireland survey of students beginning their social work course in Autumn 2018 in the six Universities delivering social work education. It describes the characteristics of the student cohort, examines the motivations behind choosing this career, and highlights some of the potentially relevant life experiences and beliefs which may have contributed to their ambition to join the social work profession. Implications for social work education, recommendations for curriculum development, workforce planning, and the provision of appropriate support for students are discussed