Children’s Rough-and-Tumble Play in a Supportive Early Childhood Education and Care Environment

While a growing body of evidence highlights the benefits of rough-and-tumble play (R&T) in young children, it remains one of the most challenging kinds of play to support in early childhood education and care environment (ECEC) institutions. The present study explores the occurrence and characteristics of R&T in indoor and outdoor environments in a Norwegian sociocultural context where children can freely choose what, where, and with whom to play. The data consist of 100 randomly recorded two-minute videos, which were coded second by second for R&T. Qualitative analysis reveals that in a physically and culturally supportive environment for R&T, children aged 3–5 years perceive indoor spaces that afford physically active play to be more attractive for R&T than outdoor environments. The findings indicate gender differences related to R&T and how girls and boys use the physical environment in different ways. The quantitative findings are discussed within interactional affordances theory and show that children practise perceptual, motor, and social skills to successfully engage in R&T. Enhanced knowledge of children’s skill acquisition in R&T can support practitioners in developing pedagogical skills to facilitate challenging and safe environments for appropriate indoor R&T for both girls and boys.publishedVersio

Place reference in story beginnings: a cross-linguistic study of narrative and interactional affordances

People often begin stories in conversation by referring to person, time, and place. We study story beginnings in three societies and find place reference is recurrently used to (i) set the stage, foreshadowing the type of story and the kind of response due, and to (ii) make the story cohere, anchoring elements of the developing story. Recipients orient to these interactional affordances of place reference by responding in ways that attend to the relevance of place for the story and by requesting clarification when references are incongruent or noticeably absent. The findings are based on 108 story beginnings in three unrelated languages: Cha’palaa, a Barbacoan language of Ecuador; Northern Italian, a Romance language of Italy; and Siwu, a Kwa language of Ghana. The commonalities suggest we have identified generic affordances of place reference, and that storytelling in conversation offers a robust sequential environment for systematic comparative research on conversational structures

Visual world studies of conversational perspective taking: similar findings, diverging interpretations

Visual-world eyetracking greatly expanded the potential for insight into how listeners access and use common ground during situated language comprehension. Past reviews of visual world studies on perspective taking have largely taken the diverging findings of the various studies at face value, and attributed these apparently different findings to differences in the extent to which the paradigms used by different labs afford collaborative interaction. Researchers are asking questions about perspective taking of an increasingly nuanced and sophisticated nature, a clear indicator of progress. But this research has the potential not only to improve our understanding of conversational perspective taking. Grappling with problems of data interpretation in such a complex domain has the unique potential to drive visual world researchers to a deeper understanding of how to best map visual world data onto psycholinguistic theory. I will argue against this interactional affordances explanation, on two counts. First, it implies that interactivity affects the overall ability to form common ground, and thus provides no straightforward explanation of why, within a single noninteractive study, common ground can have very large effects on some aspects of processing (referential anticipation) while having negligible effects on others (lexical processing). Second, and more importantly, the explanation accepts the divergence in published findings at face value. However, a closer look at several key studies shows that the divergences are more likely to reflect inconsistent practices of analysis and interpretation that have been applied to an underlying body of data that is, in fact, surprisingly consistent. The diverging interpretations, I will argue, are the result of differences in the handling of anticipatory baseline effects (ABEs) in the analysis of visual world data. ABEs arise in perspective-taking studies because listeners have earlier access to constraining information about who knows what than they have to referential speech, and thus can already show biases in visual attention even before the processing of any referential speech has begun. To be sure, these ABEs clearly indicate early access to common ground; however, access does not imply integration, since it is possible that this information is not used later to modulate the processing of incoming speech. Failing to account for these biases using statistical or experimental controls leads to over-optimistic assessments of listeners’ ability to integrate this information with incoming speech. I will show that several key studies with varying degrees of interactional affordances all show similar temporal profiles of common ground use during the interpretive process: early anticipatory effects, followed by bottom-up effects of lexical processing that are not modulated by common ground, followed (optionally) by further late effects that are likely to be post-lexical. Furthermore, this temporal profile for common ground radically differs from the profile of contextual effects related to verb semantics. Together, these findings are consistent with the proposal that lexical processes are encapsulated from common ground, but cannot be straightforwardly accounted for by probabilistic constraint-based approaches

Goffman e o narco: como as propriedades técnicas do YouTube são usadas na guerra contra as drogas

This paper advances the discussion about the interactions enabled through communication technologies by articulating Goffman’s theory of strategic interactions and Trevor Pinch’s concept of co-presence, and applying them to analyze the way a Mafia’s armed wing posted videos on YouTube during the turf war developed in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, from 2008 to 2011. I analyzed the videos and the comments set up below them. Science and Technology Studies scholars have been engaged in a debate about how to study online contents. They agree that STS should advance approaches that only give an account of the semiotic properties of the contents, in order to explore the interactions they enable. However, they don’t agree on how this should be done. This study lends support to perspectives arguing that Goffman’s theory is still relevant to analyze online interactions, in spite of having written his theory before the expansion of the Internet. I provide examples to argue that, in fact, Goffman was fully aware that interactions could be technologically mediated. I suggest that members of the armed wing shaped YouTube’s technological affordances to make themselves accountable to other parties in the war, and available for interaction.El debate actual sobre el análisis de las interacciones en línea dentro del área de los Estudios sobre la Ciencia y la Tecnología tiene dos aristas. Por una parte, existe un consenso en que este campo de estudios debe ofrecer explicaciones que rebasen los análisis semióticos de los contenidos en internet. En lo que los académicos no están de acuerdo es en qué teorías sociológicas deberían usarse para este propósito. En este artículo contribuyo a este debate rescatando un marco teórico que Erving Goffman desarrolló utilizando información empírica de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Aunque él escribió sus teorías antes de la popularización del Internet, Goffman tenía claro que las interacciones sociales podían ser tecnológicamente mediadas. En este estudio aplico este marco teórico, así como el concepto de co-presencia de Trevor Pinch, para entender por qué un brazo armado de una organización criminal que trafica drogas usó YouTube durante un enfrentamiento en Ciudad Juárez, México, durante el periodo 2008–2011. Este estudio analiza los videos que integrantes de esta organización postearon en YouTube, así como los comentarios subsecuentes. Se concluye que los integrantes de este brazo armado usaron ciertas propiedades tecnológicas de YouTube para hacerse co–presentes y así poder interactuar en línea con diferentes grupos envueltos en el conflicto.O debate atual sobre a análise de interações on-line na área de estudos de ciência e tecnologia tem dois lados. Por um lado, existe um consenso de que esse campo de estudo deve oferecer explicações que vão além das análises semióticas de conteúdo na internet. O que os estudiosos discordam é sobre quais teorias sociológicas devem ser usadas para esse fim. Neste artigo, contribuo para esse debate, resgatando um arcabouço teórico desenvolvido por Erving Goffman usando informações empíricas da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Embora ele tenha escrito suas teorias antes da popularização da Internet, Goffman estava claro que as interações sociais podiam ser mediadas tecnologicamente. Neste estudo, aplico esse arcabouço teórico, bem como o conceito de co-presença de Trevor Pinch, para entender por que um braço armado de uma organização criminosa que trafica drogas usava o YouTube durante um confronto em Ciudad Juárez, México, durante o período 2008- 2011. Este estudo analisa os vídeos que os membros desta organização postaram no YouTube, bem como os comentários subsequentes. Conclui-se que os membros desse grupo armado usaram certas propriedades tecnológicas do YouTube para se tornarem co-presentes e, assim, poder interagir online com diferentes grupos envolvidos no conflito.publishedVersio

Video prototyping of dog-inspired non-verbal affective communication for an appearance constrained robot

Original article can be found at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org “This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.”This paper presents results from a video human-robot interaction (VHRI) study in which participants viewed a video in which an appearance-constrained Pioneer robot used dog-inspired affective cues to communicate affinity and relationship with its owner and a guest using proxemics, body movement and orientation and camera orientation. The findings suggest that even with the limited modalities for non-verbal expression offered by a Pioneer robot, which does not have a dog-like appearance, these cues were effective for non-verbal affective communication

Lyceum: internet voice groupware for distance learning

This paper describes the design, implementation and deployment of Lyceum, a groupware system providing students and tutors with real time voice conferencing and visual workspace tools, over the standard internet. Lyceum uses a Java client/server architecture to tackle a formidable set of networking requirements: multi-way voice communication with synchronous shared displays, scalable to hundreds of simultaneous users, running over normal modem connections via unknown internet service providers, on home PCs. Additionally, the design had to support multiple courses with different requirements. We describe the interdisciplinary requirements analysis, and iterative design process, by which an academic course team was able to specify and evaluate prototypes. We present the systemís architecture, describe the technical successes and failures from Lyceumís first large scale deployment, and summarise its affordances for interaction and learning

Design as conversation with digital materials

This paper explores Donald Schön's concept of design as a conversation with materials, in the context of designing digital systems. It proposes material utterance as a central event in designing. A material utterance is a situated communication act that depends on the particularities of speaker, audience, material and genre. The paper argues that, if digital designing differs from other forms of designing, then accounts for such differences must be sought by understanding the material properties of digital systems and the genres of practice that surround their use. Perspectives from human-computer interaction (HCI) and the psychology of programming are used to examine how such an understanding might be constructed.</p