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Thought curfew
Published in Alan Bleakley, Routledge handbook of the medical humanities, 2019
The script played with the imaginary vocabulary of theatre to stretch time, space and the credibility of her journey. The unthinking behaviour that she was witnessing was playful, absurd, pointless and sinister. The fantasy made no pretence at realism and was as plausible as a mental flight of fancy as a physical odyssey. In reality, the script was derived from observed behaviour, language and dialogue in each of these contradictory landscapes. Her ‘Uncanny Valley’1 experience was due to a subtle shift in her ability to believe and trust in the words spoken to her and the sincerity behind them. There are no direct threats to the main character, yet she finds the world alien and dangerous. Her nightmare was not of a ‘Thought Curfew’ but of a world that appeared to be capable of suppressing human empathy. The landscape of the Thought Curfew is tragically ineffective, but in her mind the tragedy was not simply a loss of utility. The fear that she acted out for the audience was more poignant. Without empathy, without human doubt, fear and anxiety, she saw a world that continued to function but without the self-criticism needed to understand why.
Robotic assistance for people with dementia: a viable option for the future?
Published in Expert Review of Medical Devices, 2020
Justyna Gerłowska, Marzena Furtak-Niczyporuk, Konrad Rejdak
The second branch of social robotics involves robots with more pragmatic usage. These constitute assistive robots that perform actions such as fetching, monitoring the user’s state, and introducing solutions to observed problems. The opinions of users participating in trials with socially assistive robots like RAMCIP are divided. Some highlight the necessity for the development of robots that due to AI and high levels of autonomy would supplement the labor of the primary caregiver. In contrast, a group of participants treats robots as objects, and strongly emphasizes the necessity for control over them. In recent decades, designers have puzzled over the hurdles associated with such attitudes. The level of anthropomorphizing and Mori’s uncanny valley paradigm are no longer theoretical disputes. Current research demonstrates concerns in the healthy population that indicate that HRI may be perceived as threatening. How would people with limited insight react to humanoid robots if they resemble humans too closely? Is such research ethical? Such patients could forget that they are interacting with a robot not a human. The social perception is that robots provide the optimal solution for lonely elderly people. The biggest threat is that development of further assistive technologies would allow healthy humans to avoid contact with the patient. It could also result in avoidance of any direct contact with any human at all.
Seeing minds in patients with disorders of consciousness
Published in Brain Injury, 2020
Andrew Peterson, Kristin M. Kostick, Katherine A. O’Brien, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby
We observed that some family caregivers and health care professionals described patients with DoC with nonclinical concepts and terms, and that some of these descriptions were framed with ambivalent language or logically inconsistent beliefs. One plausible explanation for this phenomenon (in addition to those reviewed above) is that family caregivers and health care professionals experience an unsettling cognitive dissonance when interacting with patients with DoC. This cognitive dissonance has been referred to variously as the uncanny valley. Experience of the uncanny valley occurs when people interact with entities that appear as if they have a mind but are known a priori to not have a mind (24). This causes an unsettling experience that becomes more pronounced as the entity’s appearance and behavior more closely resembles that of a conscious human.
A virtual speaker in noisy classroom conditions: supporting or disrupting children’s listening comprehension?
Published in Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, 2019
Jens Nirme, Magnus Haake, Viveka Lyberg Åhlander, Jonas Brännström, Birgitta Sahlén
Qualitative aspects of the presentation of the virtual speaker possibly prevented benefits that could have been observed by visual presentation of a real speaker As mentioned, our lip-reading expert did note minor issues with some pronunciations of /f/. The appearance of the virtual speaker might also have distracted the participating children. The term “uncanny valley” is used to discuss how virtual characters that approach (but not quite replicate) human visual appearance may be perceived as unpleasant [50]. The virtual speaker in the current study was therefore designed not to appear far too photorealistic to decrease the risk of “falling into” the uncanny valley. It is also worth noting that the recorded speaker was reading the texts from a piece of paper placed next to the camera rather than addressing a listener. This could also add to an unnatural appearance, as much of non-verbal behavior typically present in face-to-face communication (such as hand gestures) was not produced. The responses to the first question addressing perceived listening effort (Q1) did, however, not indicate any adverse reactions to seeing the virtual speaker. We are currently working on a follow-up study comparing the virtual speaker with the real video of the actual speaker recorded in parallel to the motion capture recordings. Preliminary results indicate that the benefit of seeing the virtual speaker when listening in noise is at least at the same level as seeing the actual speaker [51].