江戸川大学

Introduction Social robots are increasingly being integrated into children's daily lives, shaping their social interactions and learning behaviors. However, no study has empirically investigated the effect of robot-administered praise in children younger than 4 years old.Method This study focuses on the social robot CommU, a simple, approximately 30 cm tall, child-shaped robot that exerts less social pressure and helps children attend to social cues more easily. We examined whether praise from CommU is associated with task persistence in children aged 18-24 months, in comparison with human praise.Result Children showed greater task persistence in the Praise condition than in the No Praise condition, regardless of agent type (CommU vs. Human). In addition, children's task persistence was positively associated with the amount of time they spent looking at the agent.Discussion These findings suggest that praise delivered by a social robot is associated with greater task persistence in children aged 18-24 months. Additionally, the positive association between task persistence and time spent looking at the agent suggests that children's social attention may contribute to sustained engagement during the task. More broadly, the results point to the possibility that social robots may be relevant to aspects of early childhood engagement, beyond the specific task-persistence behavior examined in this study.

The context of this analysis is that the tourism industry profits from public protected areas, and deploys a suite of political strategies to gain greater opportunities and control. A few tourism enterprises contribute significantly to conservation of threatened species, but these represent <0.01% of the sector worldwide. Most tourism enterprises aim only for profit, at the expense of biodiversity and environment, recreational park visitors and other taxpayers, and commercial competitors. Our aim here is to identify the main components of tourism industry political playbooks, used to promote expansion into public protected areas. We use interpretive thematic analysis of the lifetime experiences of park managers, tour guides, and recreation researchers, including historical documents and events. We find that tourism industry interests: run lobbying campaigns misrepresenting public protected areas as tourism assets; lobby for private tourism developments in national parks; adopt green-washing and social-washing to gain social licence; misuse ecotourism terminology and ecocertification functions; promote approaches based on individual responsibilities in order to conceal institutional changes; misrepresent conservation tourism as if it reflected the entire sector; promote privatisation of parks visitor services; gradually extend the rights associated with park tourism permits; lobby politically for land grabs; and infiltrate tourism interests into conservation organisations. We conclude that at global scale, contributions of tourism to conservation are overshadowed by threats to biodiversity from these political mechanisms, and especially from private tourism property developments inside public protected areas. We invite case studies of such developments, so future research can quantify how the playbook is deployed.

Abstract Introduction Nighttime device use is associated with sleep problems. Studies have focused on the quantitative aspects of device use (e.g., duration, frequency) but not the qualitative aspects. This study examined how nighttime device use among adolescents relates to sleep and mental health, focusing on the following qualitative aspects: (A) digital content types and (B) motives for use. Methods Participants (n=831, aged 12–18 years) reported their sleep habits, frequency of smartphone use in bed, pre-bedtime activities (e.g., videos, gaming), and answered the Pediatric Daytime Sleepiness Scale (PDSS) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7). Participants who used smartphones in bed reported six use motives (e.g., habitual use, distraction) and duration of use. Hierarchical cluster analyses were based on (A) pre-bedtime activities and (B) motives for smartphone use in bed. Associations between activity-based clusters and sleep habits, PDSS, and GAD-7 were examined using ANCOVA adjusted for gender. Associations between motive-based clusters and the same outcomes were analyzed using multivariable logistic regression adjusted for grade, gender, and duration of smartphone use in bed. Results (A) Based on pre-bedtime activity responses (n=831), five clusters were identified: Cluster 1, “passive media users” (n=287); Cluster 2, “studying & passive media users” (n=88); Cluster 3, “heavy social networking services (SNS) users” (n=61); Cluster 4, “heavy gaming users” (n=84); and Cluster 5, “lower device users” (n=311). “Lower device users” showed advanced sleep–wake phase and longer weekday sleep duration than the other clusters. “Studying & passive media users” and “heavy SNS users” showed stronger sleepiness and anxiety. (B) Based on smartphone-use motive responses (n=506), four clusters were identified: Cluster A, “diverse users” (n=152); Cluster B, “diverse users excluding distraction” (n=139); Cluster C, “habitual users” (n=127); Cluster D, “purposeful users” (n=88). Compared with “purposeful users,” social jetlag was more likely among “diverse users” (aOR=2.35*), “diverse users excluding distraction” (aOR=2.27*), and “habitual users” (aOR=2.99**). Furthermore, “diverse users” had higher odds for sleepiness (aOR=2.54**) and anxiety (aOR=3.25***). Conclusion This study showed differences in digital content and motives for smartphone use to be associated with sleep habits, daytime sleepiness, and anxiety. These findings highlight the need to consider both quantitative and qualitative aspects of device use. Support (if any)