TAMER : touch-guided anxiety management via engagement with a robotic pet efficacy evaluation and the first steps of the interaction design

Anxiety disorders are widespread among children and adolescents, yet the existing treatments are effective for only a small proportion of the affected young population. We propose a novel idea for improving the efficacy of anxiety treatments that relies on affective touch as a therapeutic medium. Bu...

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Main Author: Sefidgar, Yasaman Sadat
Language:English
Published: University of British Columbia 2012
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2429/42135
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spelling ndltd-UBC-oai-circle.library.ubc.ca-2429-421352018-01-05T17:25:44Z TAMER : touch-guided anxiety management via engagement with a robotic pet efficacy evaluation and the first steps of the interaction design Sefidgar, Yasaman Sadat Anxiety disorders are widespread among children and adolescents, yet the existing treatments are effective for only a small proportion of the affected young population. We propose a novel idea for improving the efficacy of anxiety treatments that relies on affective touch as a therapeutic medium. Building upon the wealth of evidence for therapeutic benefits of animals, our approach utilizes an animatronic pet, the Haptic Creature, as a tool to deliver calming effects. We ground our idea in the framework of social cognitive theory as used in human-animal interaction. We first model the interaction design as a search in a broadly defined interaction space, and then introduce a novel and systematic approach to the interaction design process. We describe our iterative design of a human-Creature interaction that was measurably calming, and share the methodology and results of our two most significant evaluation cycles. Our principal results, from the second study, showed that the interaction with the Haptic Creature, while it is breathing slowly and constantly, produces calming effects as indicated by decreased heart rate and breathing rate as well as the subjective reports. Science, Faculty of Computer Science, Department of Graduate 2012-04-20T17:01:31Z 2012-04-20T17:01:31Z 2012 2012-05 Text Thesis/Dissertation http://hdl.handle.net/2429/42135 eng Attribution 3.0 Unported http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ University of British Columbia
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language English
sources NDLTD
description Anxiety disorders are widespread among children and adolescents, yet the existing treatments are effective for only a small proportion of the affected young population. We propose a novel idea for improving the efficacy of anxiety treatments that relies on affective touch as a therapeutic medium. Building upon the wealth of evidence for therapeutic benefits of animals, our approach utilizes an animatronic pet, the Haptic Creature, as a tool to deliver calming effects. We ground our idea in the framework of social cognitive theory as used in human-animal interaction. We first model the interaction design as a search in a broadly defined interaction space, and then introduce a novel and systematic approach to the interaction design process. We describe our iterative design of a human-Creature interaction that was measurably calming, and share the methodology and results of our two most significant evaluation cycles. Our principal results, from the second study, showed that the interaction with the Haptic Creature, while it is breathing slowly and constantly, produces calming effects as indicated by decreased heart rate and breathing rate as well as the subjective reports. === Science, Faculty of === Computer Science, Department of === Graduate
author Sefidgar, Yasaman Sadat
spellingShingle Sefidgar, Yasaman Sadat
TAMER : touch-guided anxiety management via engagement with a robotic pet efficacy evaluation and the first steps of the interaction design
author_facet Sefidgar, Yasaman Sadat
author_sort Sefidgar, Yasaman Sadat
title TAMER : touch-guided anxiety management via engagement with a robotic pet efficacy evaluation and the first steps of the interaction design
title_short TAMER : touch-guided anxiety management via engagement with a robotic pet efficacy evaluation and the first steps of the interaction design
title_full TAMER : touch-guided anxiety management via engagement with a robotic pet efficacy evaluation and the first steps of the interaction design
title_fullStr TAMER : touch-guided anxiety management via engagement with a robotic pet efficacy evaluation and the first steps of the interaction design
title_full_unstemmed TAMER : touch-guided anxiety management via engagement with a robotic pet efficacy evaluation and the first steps of the interaction design
title_sort tamer : touch-guided anxiety management via engagement with a robotic pet efficacy evaluation and the first steps of the interaction design
publisher University of British Columbia
publishDate 2012
url http://hdl.handle.net/2429/42135
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