There is a clear imperative to discover ways to deliver usable, clear, and persuasive information that will facilitate personal motivation to adopt self-management behaviors, such as increased physical activity that may stem the rise of behavior sensitive conditions, such as Hypertensive cardiovascular disease. The objective of this study is to gain a clearer understanding of how wellness-oriented Web-based learning platforms may interact with individual states of mind and behavior to motivate sustainable adherence to increased physical activity routines that may improve disease emergence outcomes.
Retaining women in computer science is key to maintaining diversity in the field and in subfields such as HCI. There is considerable evidence that women leave STEM majors more frequently than men, leaving behind low numbers of female graduates in computer science. The current study used a two-factor model of self-esteem to understand how women's self-esteem changes during their undergraduate years. This two-factor model of self-esteem recognized that self-esteem includes factors of both worthiness and competence. In this cross-sectional research, 131 undergraduate and professional women, majoring and working in computer science and related fields completed a survey based on the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale and expanded by this author. Half of the questions regarded general feelings of worthiness and competence and the others concerned these two factors, situated within computing-related educational and work experiences. Preliminary analysis revealed three key findings: (1) Participant feelings of self-esteem within computing were lower than their feelings of self-esteem in general; (2) Participant responses to worthiness questions were lower than responses to competence questions; and, (3) Student responses to self-esteem questions situated within their major showed a strong interaction with undergraduate standing when viewed through the two-factor lens. Both computer science competence and worthiness dropped for the junior level participants. Measures of competence recovered for senior participants but worthiness did not. This work pinpoints where and why women may be leaving computing majors and suggests that intervention programs focused on developing both competence and worthiness could be helpful for retaining women in computing.
Gaze following, or our ability to attend to where others are looking can be top-down controlled by context information about the social relevance of the gaze signal. In particular, it has been shown that gaze signals are followed more strongly when the gazer is believed to have a mind with the ability to show intentional behavior (i.e., human) compared to being pre-programmed (i.e., robot). Perceiving human traits in nonhuman agents (i.e., anthropomorphism) occurs naturally in human-robot interaction, where it has positive effects on performance. It can also attenuate performance, if the robot is designed in a way that makes it hard to categorize as human or nonhuman (e.g., humanoid appearance), and inflicts additional working memory load due to categorical ambiguity. Here, we examine if gaze signals of ambiguous humanoid agents are followed differently than those of unambiguous human or robot agents, and to what extent gaze following is affected by individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC). We assume participants with high versus low WMC to be more capable of suppressing reflexive gaze following behaviors to the cued location in a counterpredictive paradigm (where targets appear with high likelihoods at uncued locations), particularly when being cued by humanoid gazers (top-down control, which requires cognitive resources). While the analysis showed no effect of categorical ambiguity on top-down control abilities overall, it revealed that participants with low WMC had weaker top-down control than participants with high WMC for the most ambiguous humanoid agent. The results are discussed with regard to the design of social agents and human-robot interaction.
Despite adolescents accounting for 20% of new HIV cases, they are less likely than adults to undergo HIV testing and counseling (HTC). Videogame interventions are emerging as an effective way to teach adolescents skill building and knowledge, with evidence that skills acquired and practiced in a virtual environment can translate to real life. This study adapted an original evidence-based videogame that focused on HIV prevention in adolescents to have a greater focus on HTC and evaluated its impact. We enrolled 26 participants, aged 15-16 years, to test the adapted game, using a pre-post study design. Fifteen (58%) were girls, 23 (88%) were black, and 3 (11%) were Hispanic. Participants played an average of 3.2 hours of the game over 3 weeks. Data were collected at baseline, immediately post-gameplay (3 weeks) and at follow-up (6 weeks). Most players (85%) enjoyed playing the game and 88% said they would recommend the game to their friends. Participants reported an increase in intentions (p = .037) and knowledge (p = .025) related to HTC. Notably, at baseline and 3-week follow-up no participants reported ever undergoing HTC but at 6-week follow-up, that figure increased to two participants reporting HTC (p=0.135). This game was an engaging intervention that increased adolescents' HTC, their intentions to get tested, and their knowledge about HTC. Although the game needs to be further evaluated in a larger cohort over a longer period of time, results from this study indicate that videogames may be effective vehicles to deliver this content to adolescents.
This symposium will focus on developmental aspects of executive functions, and how technology may contribute to the enhancement of these essential cognitive skills over the lifespan. Speakers will address the development of executive functions in childhood and adolescence and will discuss issues relating to individual differences in executive functions. Throughout the presentations, speakers will discuss some of the methodological challenges in studying such an elusive construct and will discuss the opportunities afforded by new and emerging digital technologies. Issues include: (1) opportunities afforded by digital technologies for enhancing EF; (2) notable changes in EF over the course of development; (3) studying the transfer of EF with respect to more domain-specific skills; and (4) and challenges in consistently measuring EF across ages and in different populations. This symposium aims to point towards limitations and new directions in understanding and improving the development of EF in a technologically advanced society, with consideration of how digital technologies can impair - or improve the development of specific cognitive skills. Implications for children and adolescents' development in a digital context will be discussed.
