2,582 research outputs found
NEURODIVERSITY OF THE BODILY SELF: PERCEPTION, ACTION, AND COGNITION IN REAL AND VIRTUAL WORLDS
No full textThe present doctoral thesis investigates some fundamental components of the bodily self, looking at the underlying mechanisms related to perception, action, and cognition and their typical and atypical development. The use of virtual reality and multimedia technologies for studying and stimulating the bodily self is discussed.
Focusing on perception, the first study explored self-location accuracy in real environments and Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR), whereby children and adults with or without autism had to locate themselves in space with different sensory information available (i.e., vision and proprioception were manipulated). Results indicate that IVR headsets reduce self-location accuracy in neurotypical children and adults, possibly due to the features of visual inputs. On the other hand, preliminary evidence from a pilot study suggests that those children with autism who show increased reliance on proprioception in real environments, benefit from vision to locate themselves in IVR. We can conclude that IVR has unique sensorimotor features that interact with individual differences in sensorimotor functioning, with meaningful impact on the possibility for people to perceive, move, act, and therefore learn in virtual environments.
Moving to action, the second study aimed at disentangling the role of Agency and Reward in driving action selection while participants performed a free-choice task. The probability and valence (neutral or positive) of the effect resulting from participants’ selection among 3 alternatives were manipulated. Choices and reaction times were measured to understand whether participants preferred and were faster at selecting options with higher probability of producing a neutral vs. no effect (Agency) or a positive vs. neutral effect (Reward). Children and adults with or without autism were involved. Participants’ choices and RT were not affected by Agency, whereas a more frequent selection of the option with higher probability of a positive vs. neutral effect emerged across groups, thus suggesting motivation from Reward. Participants with ASD selected less frequently the option with chance level of receiving a neutral or no effect. Since that option was the one with the greatest degree of uncertainty about the choice outcome, this choice pattern could be interpreted as a sign of reduced tolerance of uncertainty. Across tasks, conditions and age groups, participants with ASD presented shorter RT, which is a marker of reduced action planning. Future research should deepen how tolerance of uncertainty and action planning impact the way individuals with ASD make choices in everyday life situations, potentially contributing to restricted and repetitive behaviours.
By an emphasis on cognition, the third study delved into the use of kinematic measures to capture motor planning and control strategies beneath cognitive performance. Neurotypical adults, children with ADHD or typical development performed an adapted Go/No-Go task while their response movement was monitored by a wearable accelerometer. Results show that neurotypical participants employed increased motor planning to correctly inhibit a prepotent response and execute the instructed alternative. Despite being accurate, children with ADHD showed reduced motor planning, which can be interpreted as a sign of impulsivity and contribute to everyday life difficulties.
The general discussion presents the future of virtual reality in leveraging embodiment to shape perception, action, and cognition. While these technologies have unique potential for controlled, yet naturalistic experiences, being vastly employed in research and increasingly in clinical practice, its distinctive effects are still largely unknown.The present doctoral thesis investigates some fundamental components of the bodily self, looking at the underlying mechanisms related to perception, action, and cognition and their typical and atypical development. The use of virtual reality and multimedia technologies for studying and stimulating the bodily self is discussed.
Focusing on perception, the first study explored self-location accuracy in real environments and Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR), whereby children and adults with or without autism had to locate themselves in space with different sensory information available (i.e., vision and proprioception were manipulated). Results indicate that IVR headsets reduce self-location accuracy in neurotypical children and adults, possibly due to the features of visual inputs. On the other hand, preliminary evidence from a pilot study suggests that those children with autism who show increased reliance on proprioception in real environments, benefit from vision to locate themselves in IVR. We can conclude that IVR has unique sensorimotor features that interact with individual differences in sensorimotor functioning, with meaningful impact on the possibility for people to perceive, move, act, and therefore learn in virtual environments.
Moving to action, the second study aimed at disentangling the role of Agency and Reward in driving action selection while participants performed a free-choice task. The probability and valence (neutral or positive) of the effect resulting from participants’ selection among 3 alternatives were manipulated. Choices and reaction times were measured to understand whether participants preferred and were faster at selecting options with higher probability of producing a neutral vs. no effect (Agency) or a positive vs. neutral effect (Reward). Children and adults with or without autism were involved. Participants’ choices and RT were not affected by Agency, whereas a more frequent selection of the option with higher probability of a positive vs. neutral effect emerged across groups, thus suggesting motivation from Reward. Participants with ASD selected less frequently the option with chance level of receiving a neutral or no effect. Since that option was the one with the greatest degree of uncertainty about the choice outcome, this choice pattern could be interpreted as a sign of reduced tolerance of uncertainty. Across tasks, conditions and age groups, participants with ASD presented shorter RT, which is a marker of reduced action planning. Future research should deepen how tolerance of uncertainty and action planning impact the way individuals with ASD make choices in everyday life situations, potentially contributing to restricted and repetitive behaviours.
By an emphasis on cognition, the third study delved into the use of kinematic measures to capture motor planning and control strategies beneath cognitive performance. Neurotypical adults, children with ADHD or typical development performed an adapted Go/No-Go task while their response movement was monitored by a wearable accelerometer. Results show that neurotypical participants employed increased motor planning to correctly inhibit a prepotent response and execute the instructed alternative. Despite being accurate, children with ADHD showed reduced motor planning, which can be interpreted as a sign of impulsivity and contribute to everyday life difficulties.
The general discussion presents the future of virtual reality in leveraging embodiment to shape perception, action, and cognition. While these technologies have unique potential for controlled, yet naturalistic experiences, being vastly employed in research and increasingly in clinical practice, its distinctive effects are still largely unknown
The self-regulatory affective touch: a speculative framework for the development of executive functioning
No full textSensitive periods soon after birth seem to be crucial for mapping brain networks and enable the development of healthy sensory responses in adulthood. Affective tactile experiences are at the core of interpersonal interactions in the neonatal period and represent a scaffolding for early development of autonomic self-regulation, which then becomes part of more complex patterns of social exchanges and executive functions across the first years of life. In the present article we reviewed recent studies that investigated physiological and behavioural responses to tactile stimulations across development, supporting our claim that affective touch is an essential part of early emerging self-regulatory skills with important cascade effects on infants’ socio-emotional and cognitive developmental trajectories
Multimedia Interventions for Neurodiversity: Leveraging Insights from Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience to Build an Innovative Practice
No full textMultimedia technologies and virtual reality offer unique possibilities to manipulate sensory, motor, interpersonal, and cognitive processes contributing to atypical developmental trajectories, thus holding an explosive potential to design innovative and engaging interventions. However, there has been little progress in developing interventions that go beyond the patient’s diagnosis or the fascination of technology and rather spring from a deep understanding of the specific neuropsychological processes to be nurtured in individuals. This perspective paper outlines how recent insights from developmental cognitive neuroscience can be leveraged to promote children’s multidimensional development and highlight future directions and challenges for innovating both research and clinical practice. Finally, we focus on some practical examples of multimedia and virtual reality activities we have designed to stimulate bodily-self experiences, which are crucial for building up a coherent sense of self and lay the foundation for interacting with the external world. Atypical bodily self is an early marker of heterogeneous neurodevelopmental conditions (such as autism spectrum disorders) and seems to be under-targeted in research and clinical approaches
Agency and reward across development and in autism: A free-choice paradigm
No full textOur ability to perform voluntary actions and make choices is shaped by the motivation from control over the resulting effects (agency) and from positive outcomes (reward). The underlying action-outcome binding mechanisms rely on sensorimotor abilities that specialise through child development and undergo different trajectories in autism. The study aimed at disentangling the role of agency and reward in driving action selection of autistic and non-autistic children and adults, who were asked to freely select one of three candies and feed the animals appearing on a tablet. The candies were associated with different probabilities of delivering a neutral vs no effect (agency task), or a positive vs neutral effect (reward task). Choices and reaction times (RT) were measured to understand whether participants preferred and were faster at selecting options with higher probability of producing a neutral vs. no effect (agency) or a positive vs. neutral effect (reward). Participants' choices and RT were not affected by agency, whereas a more frequent selection of the option with higher probability of a positive vs. neutral effect emerged across groups, thus suggesting a reward effect. Autistic participants selected less frequently the option with chance level of receiving a neutral or no effect, which could be interpreted as a sign of reduced tolerance of uncertainty. Across tasks, conditions and age groups, autistic participants presented shorter RT, which is a marker of reduced action planning and control. Future research should deepen how tolerance of uncertainty, action planning and control impact the way autistic individuals make choices in everyday life situations, potentially contributing to restricted and repetitive behaviours
Interpersonal Affective Touch in a Virtual World: Feeling the Social Presence of Others to Overcome Loneliness
No full textHumans are by nature social beings tuned to communicate and interact from the very beginning of their lives. The sense of touch represents the most direct and intimate channel of communication and a powerful means of connection between the self and the others. In our digital age, the development and diffusion of internet-based technologies and virtual environments offer new opportunities of communication overcoming physical distance. It however, happens that social interactions are often mediated, and the tactile aspects of communication are overlooked, thus diminishing the feeling of social presence, which may contribute to an increased sense of social disconnection and loneliness. The current manuscript aims to review the extant literature about the socio-affective dimension of touch and current advancements in interactive virtual environments in order to provide a new perspective on multisensory virtual communication. Specifically, we suggest that interpersonal affective touch might critically impact virtual social exchanges, promoting a sense of co-presence and social connection between individuals, possibly overcoming feelings of sensory loneliness. This topic of investigation will be of crucial relevance from a theoretical perspective aiming to understand how we integrate multisensory signals in processing and making sense of interpersonal exchanges, this is important in both typical and atypical populations. Moreover, it will pave the way to promising applications by exploring the possibility to use technical innovations to communicate more interactively in the case of people who suffer from social isolation and disconnection from others
Motivation from Agency and Reward in Typical Development and Autism: Narrative Review of Behavioral and Neural Evidence
No full textOur ability to perform voluntary actions and make choices is shaped by the motivation from having control over the resulting effects (agency) and positive outcomes (reward). We offer an overview of distinct and common behavioral and neural signatures of agency and reward. We discuss their typical and atypical developmental trajectories, focusing on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which is characterized by neurodiverse processes underlying action selection. We propose that reduced sensitivity to agency and reward in ASD may be related to atypical multisensory processes and motor planning, with potential for understanding restricted and repetitive behaviors. We emphasize the limitations of the existing literature, and prospects for future research. Understanding the neurocognitive processes that shape the way people with ASD select actions and perceive outcomes is essential to support not only learning, but also volition and self-determination
Letter from Yosh and Irene [Kuromiya] to Michi Weglyn
No full textA letter from Yosh and Irene [Kuromiya] asking Michi Weglyn for materials to create "a pictorial history of the life of Michi Nishiura Weglyn photos and documents" for the tribute to Michi Weglyn on February 21, 1998.These materials are from box 73 and 74 of the Frank Chin Papers. The Frank Chin Papers contain personal and professional correspondence between Frank Chin and Michi Weglyn relating to particular projects on which either author was working as well as files related to the Day of Remembrance Tribute to Michi Weglyn
Interpersonal motor synchrony in autism: a systematic review and meta-analysis
No full textIntroductionInterpersonal motor synchrony (IMS) is the spontaneous, voluntary, or instructed coordination of movements between interacting partners. Throughout the life cycle, it shapes social exchanges and interplays with intra- and inter-individual characteristics that may diverge in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Here we perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to summarize the extant literature and quantify the evidence about reduced IMS in dyads including at least one participant with a diagnosis of ASD. MethodsEmpirical evidence from sixteen experimental studies was systematically reviewed, encompassing spontaneous and instructed paradigms as well as a paucity of measures used to assess IMS. Of these, thirteen studies (n = 512 dyads) contributed measures of IMS with an in situ neurotypical partner (TD) for ASD and control groups, which could be used for meta-analyses. ResultsReduced synchronization in ASD-TD dyads emerged from both the systematic review and meta-analyses, although both small and large effect sizes (i.e., Hedge’s g) in favor of the control group are consistent with the data (Hedge’s g = .85, p < 0.001, 95% CI[.35, 1.35], 95% PI[-.89, 2.60]). DiscussionUncertainty is discussed relative to the type of task, measures, and age range considered in each study. We further discuss that sharing similar experiences of the world might help to synchronize with one another. Future studies should not only assess whether reduced IMS is consistently observed in ASD-TD dyads and how this shapes social exchanges, but also explore whether and how ASD-ASD dyads synchronize during interpersonal exchanges
Sensorimotor Research Utilising Immersive Virtual Reality: A Pilot Study with Children and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders
No full textWhen learning and interacting with the world, people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) show compromised use of vision and enhanced reliance on body-based information. As this atypical profile is associated with motor and social difficulties, interventions could aim to reduce the potentially isolating reliance on the body and foster the use of visual information. To this end, head-mounted displays (HMDs) have unique features that enable the design of Immersive Virtual Realities (IVR) for manipulating and training sensorimotor processing. The present study assesses feasibility and offers some early insights from a new paradigm for exploring how children and adults with ASD interact with Reality and IVR when vision and proprioception are manipulated. Seven participants (five adults, two children) performed a self-turn task in two environments (Reality and IVR) for each of three sensory conditions (Only Proprioception, Only Vision, Vision + Proprioception) in a purpose-designed testing room and an HMD-simulated environment. The pilot indicates good feasibility of the paradigm. Preliminary data visualisation suggests the importance of considering inter-individual variability. The participants in this study who performed worse with Only Vision and better with Only Proprioception seemed to benefit from the use of IVR. Those who performed better with Only Vision and worse with Only Proprioception seemed to benefit from Reality. Therefore, we invite researchers and clinicians to consider that IVR may facilitate or impair individuals depending on their profiles
The Mindful Christian with Irene Kraegel
No full textOur guest for this episode is Irene Kraegel, the author of The Mindful Christian. We examine how Christian life is enhanced by mindfulness
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