Zoekresultaten

Representation of good care in (photo)-stories

Humans use metaphors in thinking. Most metaphors are visual. In processing information stimuli the mind depends partly on visual codes. Information is processed and stored through two channels: one for non-verbal information and another for verbal information. The two different areas of information in the brain are interconnected. The information is stored in patterns that form an inner representation of how individuals perceive their reality and their self. The active processing of new information, remembering and the self-image are related phenomena, that influence each other, sometimes leading to biased interpretation or even reconstruction of contents in each of these areas. Imagination, expectations and anticipations of the future and memories are the more active manifestations of this process. In this process mimesis plays an important role. Mimesis is the imitation of reality in play, story-telling or creating images of how things should look like in the future. Through mimesis people can anticipate on roles in social life, or appropriate experiences from someone else and relate them to one’s own life story. When this happens the information is related to the self through processes of association and becomes ‘Erfahrung’.

Promoting creative autonomy support in school music education

Introduction: The notion of autonomy in Self-Determination Theory is at the core of intrinsically motivated learning, and fulfilment of the need for autonomy is essential for thriving at school. Therefore teacher-provided autonomy support has grown into a key concern in educational research. In the present study into primary school music education, the notion of creative autonomy support is introduced. Research into autonomy support is typically focused on verbal interaction. However, from an enactive perspective, teachers’ gesturing, bodily movement, facial expression, and musical action form an integral part of the socially situated interaction in music lessons, inherently involving autonomy support. In the present study, a distinction is made between creative verbal autonomy support and creative musical and non-verbal autonomy support.Methods: Applying a process-based time-serial methodology, rooted in a Complex Dynamic Systems and Enactive perspective, the effects of an intervention with Video Feedback Coaching for teachers were investigated. Video data of 105 music lessons of 18 teachers (intervention and control condition) from six primary schools was gathered, to examine teachers’ creative autonomy support at both the individual and group level.Results: The findings show that teachers in the intervention condition, compared to the control group, achieved a meaningful increase in their ability to offer creative autonomy support verbally. Teachers also showed development for the non-verbal and musical aspects of offering creative autonomy support. However, particularly for offering higher-level creative autonomy support in the non-verbal and musical mode, significant results were found for less than half of the intervention teachers.Discussion: These results underline the importance of embracing and studying the bodily dimension as an integral part of teacher autonomy support, aimed at emergence of students’ musical creativity, in primary school music education and in teacher training. We explain how these results might be relevant for autonomy enhancing musical activities in vulnerable groups.

‘The Chitchatters’: a leisure activity for people with dementia to stimulate social interaction

Purpose Worldwide, there are 30 million people with dementia (PWD) in 2009 and 100 million in 2050, respectively.These numbers show the need for a change in care for PWD. Leisure is one of these care aspects. Leisure activities can support PWD in several ways: meeting basic needs, providing comfort and social interaction, and reducing boredom, agitation, and isolation. An exemplary activity targeted at meeting these needs is ‘De Klessebessers (KB)’ (The Chitchatters), which aims to stimulate social interaction among PWD and provide comfort with supporting technology. This is innovative since technology for PWD generally concentrates on safety and monitoring activities. The activity comprises a radio, television, telephone, and treasure box. Method This study’s focus follows from the original aim of the KB-designers; to stimulate social interaction. In a nursing home and day care centre, the KB game was played with different groups of PWD (n=21: 12 females, 9 males, mean MMSE=17, range 3-28). In the morning KB (with technology), and in the afternoon an activity called ‘Questiongame’ (without technology) were played for 45 minutes. These activities were played twice in a two-month period, and outcomes were compared in terms of impact on social interaction. Group sizes ranged from 3 to 8 PWD assisted by 1 or 2 activity therapists. Two researchers observed the players during the activity with the Oshkosh Social Behavior Coding (OSBC) scale, which encompasses both verbal and nonverbal social and nonsocial behaviour. These behaviours can have a person-initiated and otherinitiated character (quantitative study). A total of 6 activity therapists were interviewed on the KB afterwards (qualitative study). Results & Discussion The quantitative results showed significantly higher scores for KB for the total of social interaction compared to Questiongame. Most of the behaviour is other-initiated (activity therapist). PWD with a lower MMSE score showed more non-verbal behaviour. For PWD with a MMSE score below 7, there was no difference in social interaction between the two activities. According to the qualitative research, KB triggered more social interaction, since the movies and music were stimulating the players to initiate a conversation, to which other players responded. The results of this research correspond with earlier research, which concludes that leisure activities with technology can show positive results on well-being.

Non-verbal storytelling tools for narrative designers

Human-cobot Teams

Now that collaborative robots are becoming more widespread in industry, the question arises how we can make them better co-workers and team members. Team members cooperate and collaborate to attain common goals. Consequently they provide and receive information, often non-linguistic, necessary to accomplish the work at hand and coordinate their activities. The cooperative behaviour needed to function as a team also entails that team members have to develop a certain level of trust towards each other. In this paper we argue that for cobots to become trusted, successful co-workers in an industrial setting we need to develop design principles for cobot behaviour to provide legible, that is understandable, information and to generate trust. Furthermore, we are of the opinion that modelling such non-verbal cobot behaviour after animal co-workers may provide useful opportunities, even though additional communication may be needed for optimal collaboration. Marijke Bergman, Elsbeth de Joode, +1 author Janienke Sturm Published in CHIRA 2019 Computer Science

Language gains in 4–6-year-old children with developmental language disorder and the relation with language profile, severity, multilingualism and non-verbal cognition

Background: Early and effective treatment for children with developmental language disorder (DLD) is important. Although a growing body of research shows the effects of interventions at the group level, clinicians observe large individual differences in language growth, and differences in outcomes across language domains. A systematic understanding of how child characteristics contribute to changes in language skills is still lacking. Aims: To assess changes in the language domains: expressive morphosyntax; receptive and expressive vocabulary; and comprehension, in children in special needs education for DLD. To explore if differences in language gains between children are related to child characteristics: language profile; severity of the disorder; being raised mono- or multilingually; and cognitive ability. Methods & Procedures: We extracted data from school records of 154 children (4–6 years old) in special needs education offering a language and communication-stimulating educational environment, including speech and language therapy. Changes in language were measured by comparing the scores on standardized language tests at the beginning and the end of a school year. Next, we related language change to language profile (receptive–expressive versus expressive-only disorders), severity (initial scores), growing up mono- and multilingually, and children’s reported non-verbal IQ scores. Outcomes&Results: Overall, the children showed significant improvements in expressive morphosyntax, expressive vocabulary and language comprehension. Baseline scores and gains were lowest for expressive morphosyntax. Differences in language gains between children with receptive–expressive disorders and expressive-only disorders were not significant. There was more improvement in children with lower initial scores. There were no differences between mono- and multilingual children, except for expressive vocabulary. There was no evidence of a relation between non-verbal IQ scores and language growth. Conclusions & Implications: Children with DLD in special needs education showed gains in language performance during one school year. There was, however, little change in morphosyntactic scores, which supports previous studies concluding that poor morphosyntax is a persistent characteristic of DLD. Our results indicate that it is important to include all children with DLD in intervention: children with receptive–expressive and expressive disorders; monoand multilingual children, and children with high, average and low non-verbal IQ scores. We did not find negative relations between these child factors and changes in language skills.