Bias Against Older Adults in Young Children and Their Parents

Parents are an important source of social learning for their children. However, little is known about whether they play a role in shaping ageist attitudes in children. We investigated how parents’ biases against older adults would relate to those of their children and how preferences would differ depending on the child’s age. Participants were 56 parent-child dyads with the children’s age ranging from four to eight years (parents mean age = 36.95, SD = 5.49). Children were divided into three age groups, preschool (n = 18), early school-aged (n = 18), and middle school-aged (n = 20). Children and parents completed a picture rating task, which included the evaluation of 28 images of younger and older adults faces. Children used a smiley-face rating scale on a touch-screen computer, and parents used a sliding preference scale for their ratings. It was found that both, children (t(55) = 5.47, p < .001, d = 0.73) and their parents (t(55) = 2.05, p = 0.045, d = 0.27), gave significantly more positive ratings to younger than to older adults, which is consistent with an underlying bias for younger adults. Contrary to our expectations, this preference in children held across age groups and was not associated with parental preferences. Nevertheless, it has been shown that ageist preferences can already be detected in childhood. Further longitudinal research is needed to track the development of ageism from childhood on, and efforts to combat ageism should be addressed not only to adults, but to children as well.

Adult Co-morbidity Evaluation 27 scores of head and neck cancer patients using touch-screen technology: patient satisfaction and clinical verification

Objectives:This study aimed to assess head and neck cancer patient satisfaction with the use of a touch-screen computer patient-completed questionnaire for assessing Adult Co-morbidity Evaluation 27 co-morbidity scores prior to treatment, along with its clinical reliability.Methods:A total of 96 head and neck cancer patients were included in the audit. An accurate Adult Co-morbidity Evaluation 27 co-morbidity score was achieved via patient-completed questionnaire assessment for 97 per cent of participants.Results:In all, 96 per cent of patients found the use of a touch-screen computer acceptable and would be willing to use one again, and 62 per cent would be willing to do so without help. Patients were more likely to be willing to use the computer again without help if they were aged 65 years or younger (χ2test;p= 0.0054) or had a performance status of 0 or 1 (χ2test;p= 0.00034).Conclusion:Use of a touch-screen computer is an acceptable approach for assessing Adult Co-morbidity Evaluation 27 scores at pre-treatment assessment in a multidisciplinary joint surgical–oncology clinic.

Development and Implementation of Touch Screen Multimedia Technology in Sports Physiology Curriculum

With the advance of technological development, many emerging technologies have been successfully applied in the teaching field, resulting in significant improvements in teaching effects. However, applying these technologies to sports specialty teaching is difficult because of certain limitations of the specialty. Few trials have been made to reform teaching methods. This study analyzes innovative studies on existing sports teaching, points out shortcomings, and attempts to introduce touch screen multimedia technology in the sports specialty. This study also discusses the theoretical basis and supporting technology to construct touch screen multimedia teaching system, as well as the design and implementation of this system. The author applies this system in Sports Physiology teaching and designs a control experiment. Results show that the practical teaching effect of touch screen computer-assisted sports is superior to the traditional teaching method, and this technology offers a new teaching mode for sports teaching.

Assessment of Human Vulnerability in a Touch-Screen Game; Metrics and Analysis

Assistive machine design based on human physiological measurements offers variety of opportunities in both civilian and military applications. In such settings the machine would need to compute certain metrics associated with these measurements to decide how to assist the humans. In this paper, we study a set of metrics pertaining to human behavioral patterns in easy and difficult tasks taken on a touch screen computer game. Analysis of these metrics reveal that some of them can be utilized as indicators of task difficulty showing promise for their use by machines. The metric results are also compared with task performance metrics, as well as a reliable and established metric called pNN50 calculated from subjects’ heart rate measurements and serving as the baseline.

A Zoo-housed Chimpanzee’s (Pan troglodytes) Responses to Potentially Arousing Stimuli

In Experiment 1, we wished to determine whether a singly-housed adult male captive chimpanzee could discriminate the behavioral categories of sex and aggression. He was reinforced for selecting sexual rather than aggressive images on a touch-screen computer in a two-choice discrimination paradigm. He showed no discrimination after 24 sessions with non-human photos, but immediately selected human sexual images at above-chance levels. To explore whether this differential discrimination was due to a preference for human sexual images, he was presented with images of humans versus non-humans under non-differential reinforcement in Experiment 2. He preferred human photos if the images depicted sex, but not if the images depicted aggression. To further explore these preferences in Experiment 3 the chimpanzee was presented with images of genitalia of non-humans versus humans, genitalia versus eyes, and finally female versus male genitalia of both non-humans and humans, using non-differential reinforcement. The chimpanzee preferred human to non-human genitalia, and eyes to genitalia, but did not prefer female to male genitalia. This chimpanzee’s unusual social environment may have interfered with species-typical social preferences.