Social Interaction Style in Autism: An Inquiry into Phenomenological Methodology

Autistic difficulties with social interaction have primarily been understood as expressions of underlying impairment of the ability to ‘mindread.’ Although this understanding of autism and social interaction has raised controversy in the phenomenological community for decades, the phenomenological criticism remains largely on a philosophical level. This article helps fill this gap by discussing how phenomenology can contribute to empirical methodologies for studying social interaction in autism. By drawing on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and qualitative data from an ongoing study on social interaction in autism, I discuss how qualitative interviews and participant observation can yield phenomenologically salient data on social interaction. Both, I argue, enjoy their phenomenological promise through facilitating attention to the social-spatial-material fields in and through which social interactions and experiences arise. By developing phenomenologically sound approaches to studying social interaction, this article helps resolve the deficiency of knowledge concerning experiential dimensions of social interaction in autism.

A Kinematic Evaluation of Linear and Parabolic Pointing in Virtual Reality

We present the results of a study investigating the influence of task and effector constraints on the kinematics of pointing movements performed in immersive virtual environments. We compared the effect of target width, as a task constraint, to the effect of movement distance, as an effector constraint, in terms of overall effect on movement time in a pointing task. We also compared a linear ray-cast pointing technique to a parabolic pointing technique to understand how interaction style may be understood in the context of task and effector constraints. The effect of target width as an information constraint on pointing performance was amplified in VR. Pointing technique acted as an effector constraint, with linear ray-cast pointing resulting in faster performance than parabolic pointers.

Do I still like myself? Human-robot collaboration entails emotional consequences

Investigating emotional processes has been vital for understanding human-human interaction. Specifically, emotional concepts of oneself and the interaction partner shape the interaction style and are associated with mental health and cognitive performance. Here, it is investigated whether these concepts areequally relevant in human-robot interaction (HRI). We measured emotional concepts before and afteronline collaboration with a robot described as (a) able, (b) unable to experience emotions, or (c) autonomous without reference to emotions, compared to a (d) control condition without collaboration. Conceptswere measured using the affective His-Mine-Paradigm (aHMP) in which participants were asked to affectively evaluate pronoun-noun-pairs that were related to themselves (e.g., “my victory”) or the robot (e.g.,“his victory”). Results indicated that (1) the aHMP can be validly used in HRI contexts, (2) emotionalself-concept got less positive after interacting with an “emotionless” robot, and emotional robot-conceptgot more positive after interacting with an (3) “autonomous” or (4) “emotional” robot. We conclude thatbeliefs about and interactions with robots can change emotional concepts of both oneself and the robot.We argue and show that such changes are linked to well-being, performance, and interaction style. Thus,emotional consequences for the human should be considered when designing HRIs.

Vnímanie interakčného štýlu učiteľa žiakmi a ich postoj k vyučovaciemu predmetu biológia: prípadová štúdia

The article shows the results of research investigation. The main goal was to find out how grammar school pupils perceive the interaction style of their biology teacher. We also looked at the influence of the personality of the teacher on shaping the relationship of pupils to the subject Biology. Data were obtained through a questionnaire inquiry, as a research tool we used a QTI questionnaire - a teacher interaction style questionnaire.

Personalization of Conversational Agent-Patient Interaction Styles for Chronic Disease Management: Results from two studies with COPD patients (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Conversational agents (CAs) for chronic disease management are receiving increasing attention in academia and industry. However, long-term adherence to CAs is still a challenge and to be explored. Personalization of CAs has the potential to improve long-term adherence and, with it, user satisfaction, task efficiency, perceived benefits, and intended behaviour change. Research on personalized CAs has already addressed different aspects, such as personalized recommendations or anthropomorphic cues. However, detailed information on interaction styles between patients and CAs in the role of a medical healthcare professional is scant. Such interaction styles play an essential role for patient satisfaction, treatment adherence and outcome, as has been shown for physician-patient interactions. Currently, it is not clear (i) whether chronically ill patients prefer a CA with either a paternalistic, informative, interpretive, or deliberative interaction style, and (ii) which factors influence these preferences. OBJECTIVE The objective of this paper, comprising of two consecutive studies, is to investigate preferences for CA-delivered interaction styles by chronically ill patients. METHODS The first study was conducted paper-based and explored preferences of COPD-patients for paternalistic, informative, interpretive, and deliberative CA-delivered interaction styles. Based on these results, a second study assessed the effect of the paternalistic and deliberative interaction style on the relationship quality between the CA and patients via hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses in an online experiment with COPD patients. Patients’ socio-demographic and disease-specific characteristics served as moderator variables. RESULTS Study 1 with 117 COPD patients revealed a preference for the deliberative (50 out of 117) and informative (34 out of 117) interaction styles across demographic characteristics. The paternalistic style was preferred by persons with more severe COPD (GOLD 3/4 100%). Study 2 with 123 newly recruited COPD patients showed that younger persons and persons with a less recent COPD diagnosis scored higher on interaction-related outcomes when interacting with a CA that delivered the deliberative interaction style (Age and CA Type: Relationship Quality – b = -0.77 , 95% CI = [-1.37, -0.18]; Intention to Continue Interaction – b = -0.49, 95% CI = [-0.97; -0.01]; Working Alliance Attachment Bond – b = -0.65, 95% CI = [-1.26; -0.04]; Working Alliance Goal Agreement – b = -0.59, 95% CI = [-1.18; -0.01]; Recency of COPD diagnosis and CA Type: Working Alliance Goal Agreement – b = 0.57, 95% CI = [0.01; 1.13]). CONCLUSIONS Our results indicate that age and a patient's personal disease experience inform which interaction style the patient should be paired with to achieve increased interaction related outcomes with the CA. These results allow to design personalized healthcare CAs with the goal to increase long-term adherence to health-promoting behavior.

The Effect of Dwell Time on Swipe-based Pie-Menu Navigation Efficiency

In this paper we present and analyze pie-menu implementation for touchscreen mobile devices which supports swipe-based navigation through deep hierarchical menu configurations. We propose a solution that synergistically encompasses important design features for a given context: radial menu visualization, semi-transparency, manual repositioning, occlusion awareness, and marking menu concept. From the menu navigation efficiency standpoint, dwell time represents one of the most influential factors in such a design. Reducing the time needed to automatically activate submenus could potentially provide faster navigation through the pie-menu hierarchy; however, short dwell times could make swipe-based interaction more error-prone, as unintentional item selections are then more probable. Therefore, we specifically investigate the effect of dwell time on navigation efficiency when using the proposed solution. A remotely administered experiment involving 36 participants was carried out in order to empirically evaluate different dwell time values. The interaction style, i.e. the way of holding a smartphone device, was also taken into account as an independent variable. We present the results of this empirical research, additionally tackling the interaction workload, usability attributes, and overall design considerations of the proposed solution. According to the obtained results, we argue that highly adaptable pie-menus could provide interaction benefits in the mobile touchscreen domain.