Empathic Response Card-Sort

BACKGROUND Connected Health technologies are a promising solution for chronic disease management. However, the scope of connected health systems makes it difficult to employ user-centered design in their development, and poorly designed systems can compound the challenges of information management in chronic care. The Digilego Framework addresses this problem with informatics methods that complement quantitative and qualitative methods in system design, development, and architecture. OBJECTIVE To determine the accuracy and validity of the Digilego information architecture of personal health data in meeting cancer survivors’ information needs. METHODS We conducted a card sort study with 9 cancer survivors (patients and caregivers) to analyze correspondence between the Digilego information architecture and cancer survivors’ mental models. We also analyzed participants’ card sort groups qualitatively to understand their conceptual relations. RESULTS We observed significant correlation between the Digilego information architecture and cancer survivors’ mental models of personal health data. Heuristic analysis of groups also indicated informative discordances and the need for patient-centric categories relating health tracking and social support in the information architecture. CONCLUSIONS Our pilot study shows that the Digilego Framework can capture cancer survivors’ information needs accurately; we also recognize the need for larger studies to conclusively validate Digilego information architectures. More broadly, our results highlight the importance of complementing traditional user-centered design methods and innovative informatics methods to create patient-centered connected health systems.

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Gender and Regulatory Regimes

10.1093/oso/9780190857790.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Patrick Colm Hogan

Keyword(s):

Short Stories ◽

Social Situations ◽

Empathic Response ◽

Regulatory Regimes ◽

Gender Regulation

The fifth chapter continues the focus on regulatory regimes, now turning to gender and taking up ideology and socialization rather than coercion. This chapter first considers some short stories by Tagore. Specifically, it examines the role of humiliation in the inhibition of boys’ empathic response, especially sensitivity about attachment needs. From here, the chapter turns to Woolf’s Orlando. In this novel, Woolf presents a situationist account of gender regulation. Orlando’s apparently masculine or feminine behaviors are provoked by such seemingly trivial situations as the nature of his/her clothing. Woolf nuances the situationist account by showing that some forms of situated behavior, as well as thought and feeling, are likely to become habitual through repetition. In short, it is not differences in minds that produce differences in behaviors, which in turn create social situations. Rather, differences in social situations produce differences in behaviors, leading to differences in thoughts and feelings.

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Natural human postural oscillations enhance the empathic response to a facial pain expression in a virtual character

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-91710-5 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Thomas Treal ◽

Philip L. Jackson ◽

Jean Jeuvrey ◽

Nicolas Vignais ◽

Aurore Meugnot

Keyword(s):

Facial Pain ◽

Human Motion ◽

Virtual Human ◽

Motion Processing ◽

Affective Neuroscience ◽

Virtual Character ◽

Empathic Response ◽

Video Clips ◽

Emotional Processes ◽

Pain Expression

AbstractVirtual reality platforms producing interactive and highly realistic characters are being used more and more as a research tool in social and affective neuroscience to better capture both the dynamics of emotion communication and the unintentional and automatic nature of emotional processes. While idle motion (i.e., non-communicative movements) is commonly used to create behavioural realism, its use to enhance the perception of emotion expressed by a virtual character is critically lacking. This study examined the influence of naturalistic (i.e., based on human motion capture) idle motion on two aspects (the perception of other’s pain and affective reaction) of an empathic response towards pain expressed by a virtual character. In two experiments, 32 and 34 healthy young adults were presented video clips of a virtual character displaying a facial expression of pain while its body was either static (still condition) or animated with natural postural oscillations (idle condition). The participants in Experiment 1 rated the facial pain expression of the virtual human as more intense, and those in Experiment 2 reported being more touched by its pain expression in the idle condition compared to the still condition, indicating a greater empathic response towards the virtual human’s pain in the presence of natural postural oscillations. These findings are discussed in relation to the models of empathy and biological motion processing. Future investigations will help determine to what extent such naturalistic idle motion could be a key ingredient in enhancing the anthropomorphism of a virtual human and making its emotion appear more genuine.

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‘Give Me Liberty, or Give Me . . . Nice, New, Shiny Things’: Global Development Aid Education in Australia

Perspectives on Global Development and Technology ◽

10.1163/15691497-12341392 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 319-336

Author(s):

John Buchanan ◽

Meera Varadharajan

Keyword(s):

Development Aid ◽

Global Development ◽

Policy Documents ◽

Empathic Response ◽

Shared Humanity

In a world where we are being confronted with seemingly ever more distressing images of our inability or unwillingness to exercise and extend our humanity to one another, this paper discusses global development aid, and how education, and, more specifically, syllabus and policy documents, can contribute to a more informed and empathic response to people who see through eyes different from our own. This paper discusses curricular initiatives, to enhance students’ understanding and responses to issues of global inequalities. The paper embeds this discussion within an examination of elements shaping minds and hearts with regard to such issues, and on impediments to and opportunities for a more informed and humane response to our shared humanity.

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