The MAIN Model: A Heuristic Approach to Understanding Technology Effects on Credibility

Part of the Volume on Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility Historically, credibility assessments assume a relatively explicit, effortful evaluation of message source and content, but this chapter argues that four technological features -- modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability -- can profoundly influence credibility judgments that are made more subtly and automatically while accessing information. Based on research evidence that suggests today's youth pay more attention to these technological aspects than to source and content aspects, this chapter examines the ways in which they may shape credibility perceptions during digital media use. These features are conceptualized as "affordances" (or action possibilities) that suggest certain functions and/or transmit certain cues that trigger cognitive heuristics (or mental shortcuts) leading people to their impressions of the quality and credibility of the underlying information

Effectiveness of seprafilm as Adhesion Barrier following Abdominopelvic Surgery: An Experimental study

INTRODUCTION: Post operative adhesions form one of the most common complication following abdominopelvic surgeries. the consequence of adhesion leads to lifelong morbidity and form major burden in surgeons operating for the second time. Few complications of adhesions include postoperative adhesive colic, bowel obstruction and female infertility Frequent readmissions leads to mobility of patients. Difficulty in resurgery on opening the abdomen for the second time comprises an important outcome of adhesions.Adhesiolysis stays atemporary mainstay treatment to remove adhesions as they tend to reccur following subsequent surgeries. There is need for thorough understanding of the formation adhesions, which is mainly due to reaction of the peritoneum with the intestinal loops which comes in contact with it, the complication of peritonitis, the pathology of bowel obstruction and the evolution of the adhesion barrier. RESEARCH PROPOSAL: a) AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY: Effectiveness of Seprafilm as adhesion barrier among patients undergoing elective laparotomy. e) METHOD OF COLLECTION OF DATA: a. Patients under the study group will be subjected to placement of seprafilm. b. Contrast Enhanced Computerised Tomogram will be performed for all the patients (both study and control) during 20th post operative day DISCUSSION: Results In our study distribution of age is categorised into age<40,41-50 and 51-60.The Mean age in cases is 46.2 and in control group was 46.36.The p value is 0.963 which is not significant. Thus in our study age does not contribute in formation of adhesions for the placement of Sepra In this study male:female ratio in the study group is 11:19 and in the control group is 12:18.The p value is 0.946 which is not significant. Thus male and female have equal preponderance in formation of postoperative adhesions thus In this study 17 cases in the study group and 15 cases in the control group had previous history of surgery. There is no specific difference in the changes in adhesions in previous history of laparotomy done. favouring application of seprafilm in both sex 3 patients developed postoperative fever which settled before 3rd postoperative day.1 case developed wound infection which was managed conservatively. In the control group 9 cases developed fever which settled within 3rd post operative day.4 patients developed postoperative pain till 7th day which may attribute to formation of adhesions as all developed adhesions in the 20th day CT. CONCLUSION: Out of 30 patients only 4 patients developed mimimal adhesions as compared to 16 patients who developed adhesions in the control group as evident by the 20th 90 day CT. The pvalue 0.037 which is significant thus proving the effectiveness of seprafilm as an adhesion barrier in abdominopelvic surgery

Do We Blame it on the Machine? Task Outcome and Agency Attribution in Human-Technology Collaboration

With the growing functionality and capability of technology in human-technology interaction, humans are no longer the only autonomous entity. Automated machines increasingly play the role of agentic teammates, and through this process, human agency and machine agency are constructed and negotiated. Previous research on “Computers are Social Actors (CASA)” and self-serving bias suggest that humans might attribute more technology agency and less human agency when the interaction outcome is undesirable, and vice versa. We conducted an experiment to test this proposition by manipulating task outcome of a game co-played by a user and a smartphone app, and found partially contradictory results. Further, user characteristics, sociability in particular, moderated the effect of task outcome on agency attribution, and affected user experience and behavioral intention. Such findings suggest a complex mechanism of agency attribution in human-technology collaboration, which has important implications for emerging socio-ethical and socio-technical concerns surrounding intelligent technology

Alexa as an Active Listener: How Backchanneling Can Elicit Self-Disclosure and Promote User Experience

Active listening is a well-known skill applied in human communication to build intimacy and elicit self-disclosure to support a wide variety of cooperative tasks. When applied to conversational UIs, active listening from machines can also elicit greater self-disclosure by signaling to the users that they are being heard, which can have positive outcomes. However, it takes considerable engineering effort and training to embed active listening skills in machines at scale, given the need to personalize active-listening cues to individual users and their specific utterances. A more generic solution is needed given the increasing use of conversational agents, especially by the growing number of socially isolated individuals. With this in mind, we developed an Amazon Alexa skill that provides privacy-preserving and pseudo-random backchanneling to indicate active listening. User study (N = 40) data show that backchanneling improves perceived degree of active listening by smart speakers. It also results in more emotional disclosure, with participants using more positive words. Perception of smart speakers as active listeners is positively associated with perceived emotional support. Interview data corroborate the feasibility of using smart speakers to provide emotional support. These findings have important implications for smart speaker interaction design in several domains of cooperative work and social computing.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACM HCI). The paper will be presented in CSCW 2022 (https://cscw.acm.org/2022