Effects of age and psychomotor ability on kinematics of mouse-mediated aiming movement

Accuracy and Reliability of At-home Quantification of Motor Impairments Using a Computer-based Pointing Task with Children with Ataxia-Telangiectasia

Methods for obtaining accurate quantitative assessments of motor impairments are essential in accessibility research, design of adaptive ability-based assistive technologies, as well as in clinical care and medical research. Currently, such assessments are typically performed in controlled laboratory or clinical settings under professional supervision. Emerging approaches for collecting data in unsupervised settings have been shown to produce valid data when aggregated over large populations, but it is not yet established if in unsupervised settings measures of research or clinical significance can be collected accurately and reliably for individuals. We conducted a study with 13 children with ataxia-telangiectasia and 9 healthy children to analyze the validity, test-retest reliability, and acceptability of at-home use of a recent active digital phenotyping system, called Hevelius. Hevelius produces 32 measures derived from the movement trajectories of the mouse cursor, and it produces a quantitative estimate of motor impairment in the dominant arm using the dominant arm component of the Brief Ataxia Rating Scale (BARS). The severity score estimates generated by Hevelius from single at-home sessions deviated from clinician-assigned BARS scores more than the severity score estimates generated from single sessions conducted under researcher supervision. However, taking a median of as few as 2 consecutive sessions produced severity score estimates that were as accurate or better than the estimates produced from single supervised sessions. Further, aggregating as few as 2 consecutive sessions resulted in good test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.81 for A-T participants). This work demonstrated the feasibility of performing accurate and reliable quantitative assessments of individual motor impairments in the dominant arm through tasks performed at home without supervision by the researchers. Further work is needed, however, to assess how broadly these results generalize.

Advances in Psychotherapy for Older Adults Using Video-to-Home Treatment

Providing telemental health services to older adults has become especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic. Video-to-home (VTH) treatment is an effective treatment modality; research shows that older adults are open to using VTH. However, there are unique barriers to using VTH with older adults. Barriers include access to technology, acceptance of technology, and physical and cognitive limitations. Additional concerns include establishing rapport with older patients and the policy and ethical concerns surrounding the use of VTH. Methods of addressing these barriers have been developed, and more research is needed to develop evidence-based VTH practice.

Meta-analysis of the effects of game types and devices on older adults-video game interaction: Implications for video game training on cognition

Video game training can effectively improve the cognition of older adults. However, whether video game types and game devices influence the training effects of video games remains controversial. This meta-analysis aimed to access and evaluate the effects of video game types and game devices in video game training on the cognition of older adults. Interestingly, results indicated that mouse/keyboard was superior over other video game devices on perceptual-motor function. The effect size (Hedge's g) for perceptual-motor function decreased by 1.777 and 1.722 when the video game training device changed from mouse/keyboard to driving simulator and motion controller. The effects of cognitive training game and conventional video game were moderated by session length. More well-designed studies are required to clarify the unique efficacy of video game types and devices for older adults with video game training.

Effects of mouse slant and desktop position on muscular and postural stresses, subject preference and performance in women aged 18-40 years

This study compared muscular and postural stresses, performance and subject preference in women aged 18-40 years using a standard mouse, a vertical mouse and a slanted mouse in three different computer workstation positions. Four tasks were analysed: pointing, pointing-clicking, pointing-clicking-dragging and grasping-pointing the mouse after typing. Flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS) and extensor carpi radialis (ECR) activities were greater using the standard mouse compared to the vertical or slanted mouse. In all cases, the wrist position remained in the comfort zone recommended by standard ISO 11228-3. The vertical mouse was less comfortable and more difficult to use than the other two mice. FDS and ECR activities, shoulder abduction and wrist extension were greater when the mouse was placed next to the keyboard. Performance and subject preference were better with the unrestricted mouse positioning on the desktop. Grasping the mouse after typing was the task that caused the greatest stress. Practitioner Summary: In women, the slanted mouse and the unrestricted mouse positioning on the desktop provide a good blend of stresses, performance and preference. Unrestricted mouse positioning requires no keyboard, which is rare in practice. Placing the mouse in front of the keyboard, rather than next to it, reduced the physical load.

Developing technologies for the elderly: To whom are we really developing?

The increasing number of older adults worldwide boosted the proposal of applications specifically targeting their needs. While the elderly serve as the target audience, this article argues that in many cases they are being treated as any other age group, disregarding their unique characteristics and expectations, which might eventually result in applications that, despite being used by the elderly, are adapted applications to cope with their disabilities, instead of approaches that leverage their abilities and views. As a first step of this discussion, this article aims to show how, in different stages of design and development, we are jump-starting the whole process putting our own assumptions and views where those of the elderly should be.

Towards an automatic user profiling system for online information sites

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to identify demographic differences based on how users interact with web applications. The research is needed to develop future systems able to adapt the representation of online information to the user’s specific needs and preferences improving its usability. The following question guides this quest: is there a direct relationship between age and/or gender and interaction?

Design/methodology/approach

– GOMS (goals, operators, methods, and selection rules) analysis was used to reduce complex interaction tasks into basic operators like pointing, dragging, typing, etc. An experiment was designed to analyse the user performance in the use of these operators through five complex tasks: point-and-click, drag-and-drop, text selection, text edition and menu selection. The sample comprises 592 individuals which took part in the experiment. The performance was analysed using multivariate regression analysis. User laterality and the the user experience were used as control variables.

Findings

– The factors studied are significant enough to support user classification. The analysis evidenced that men performed significantly better than women when executing interaction pointing and dragging GOMS’s operators, but no significant differences arose with regard to the performance in the typing operators. Older users performed worse in all the interaction tasks. No significant performance differences were detected between left and right-handed users.

Research limitations/implications

– The study pretends to lay the ground for developing artificial intelligence-based classification systems (e.g. neural networks, decision trees, etc.) able to detect significant differences in user performance, classifying users according to their age, gender and laterality.

Practical implications

– This user profiling would drive the organisation, selection and representation of the online information according to the specific preferences and needs of each user. This would allow the design of new personalisation algorithms able to perform dynamic adaptation of user interfaces in order to improve the usability of online information systems.

Originality/value

– This work extends previous research on user performance under a new approach and improved accuracy. First, it relies on the combined and simultaneous analysis of ageing and gender and the use of user laterality and experience as control variables. Second, the use of the GOMS analysis allowed the design of tests that closely resemble the user interaction in online information systems. Third, the size of the sample used in this analysis is much bigger than those used in previous works, allowing a more thorough data analysis which includes the estimation of an advanced model which is quantile regression.

Gerontechnology acceptance by elderly Hong Kong Chinese: a senior technology acceptance model (STAM)

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a senior technology acceptance model (STAM) aimed at understanding the acceptance of gerontechnology by older Hong Kong Chinese people. The proposed STAM extended previous technology acceptance models and theories by adding age-related health and ability characteristics of older people. The proposed STAM was empirically tested using a cross-sectional questionnaire survey with a sample of 1012 seniors aged 55 and over in Hong Kong. The result showed that STAM was strongly supported and could explain 68% of the variance in the use of gerontechnology. For older Hong Kong Chinese, individual attributes, which include age, gender, education, gerontechnology self-efficacy and anxiety, and health and ability characteristics, as well as facilitating conditions explicitly and directly affected technology acceptance. These were better predictors of gerontechnology usage behaviour (UB) than the conventionally used attitudinal factors (usefulness and ease of use).