The problem of this study was the development of a theoretical construct based on a survey of current practices and consistent with accepted theories of touch as they related to nursing.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Science. Johannesburg, 2015. / The face is a fundamental tool to assist in interpersonal communication and interaction between people. Humans use facial expressions to consciously or subconsciously express their emotional states, such as anger or surprise. As humans, we are able to easily identify changes in facial expressions even in complicated scenarios, but the task of facial expression recognition and analysis is complex and challenging to a computer. The automatic analysis of facial expressions by computers has applications in several scientific subjects such as psychology, neurology, pain assessment, lie detection, intelligent environments, psychiatry, and emotion and paralinguistic communication. We look at methods of facial expression recognition, and in particular, the recognition of Facial Action Coding System’s (FACS) Action Units (AUs). Movements of individual muscles on the face are encoded by FACS from slightly different, instant changes in facial appearance. Contractions of specific facial muscles are related to a set of units called AUs. We make use of Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) to extract keypoints from the face and use the SURF descriptors to create feature vectors. SURF provides smaller sized feature vectors than other commonly used feature extraction techniques. SURF is comparable to or outperforms other methods with respect to distinctiveness, robustness, and repeatability. It is also much faster than other feature detectors and descriptors. The SURF descriptor is scale and rotation invariant and is unaffected by small viewpoint changes or illumination changes. We use the SURF feature vectors to train a recurrent neural network (RNN) to recognize AUs from the Cohn-Kanade database. An RNN is able to handle temporal data received from image sequences in which an AU or combination of AUs are shown to develop from a neutral face. We are recognizing AUs as they provide a more fine-grained means of measurement that is independent of age, ethnicity, gender and different expression appearance. In addition to recognizing FACS AUs from the Cohn-Kanade database, we use our trained RNNs to recognize the development of pain in human subjects. We make use of the UNBC-McMaster pain database which contains image sequences of people experiencing pain. In some cases, the pain results in their face moving out-of-plane or some degree of in-plane movement. The temporal processing ability of RNNs can assist in classifying AUs where the face is occluded and not facing frontally for some part of the sequence. Results are promising when tested on the Cohn-Kanade database. We see higher overall recognition rates for upper face AUs than lower face AUs. Since keypoints are globally extracted from the face in our system, local feature extraction could provide improved recognition results in future work. We also see satisfactory recognition results when tested on samples with out-of-plane head movement, showing the temporal processing ability of RNNs.

This is a two-part study that investigated university students’ comfort with instructors’ nonverbal immediacy behaviors in a college classroom. A sample of 289 participants was drawn from a regional university in the Midwest. The participants were asked to respond to an instrument designed to measure the students’ comfort with an instructors’ nonverbal immediacy behaviors. In the first study, the results do not support the hypothesis that males are significantly more comfortable with immediacy behaviors than female students. The results also do not support the hypotheses that students of both sexes will be more comfortable with immediacy behaviors from female instructors than male instructors,or that of the four possible combinations, female students with male instructors will be the least comfortable with immediacy behaviors. In the second study, the results suggest that student gender does not have a significant effect on students’ comfort with instructor immediacy behaviors.

As humanoid robots move from science fictions to reality, and are gradually being used in education, health care, and entertainment areas, interactions between humans and humanoid robots are becoming critically important. Previous findings show that in human-robot interactions (HRI) people tend to communicate with humanoid robots as if they were humans, which requires humanoid robots to be behaviorally more humanlike and socially more sophisticated. Non-verbal behaviors (e.g. gaze cues and gestures) are essential communication signals in human-human interactions (HHI), and they are equally important in HRI. This thesis reports a study on nonverbal behaviors of humanoid robots in hope to facilitate more natural HRI. Through extensive HHI and HRI experiments, intuitive robot gaze cues and gestures are studied, and their impacts on HRI are demonstrated. / Gaze cues can subtly mediate how human-human handovers take place. We conjecture that such effect also exists in human-robot handovers. Based on observations of the giver’s gaze behaviors during human-human handovers, several typical gaze patterns are extracted and transferred to a PR2 humanoid robot for carrying out robot-to-human handovers. In two consecutive HRI experiments the robot hands objects to human receivers while using different gaze patterns. Results show that where the robot gazes at and how it changes its gaze direction during the handover can significantly affect human receivers’ reaching time for the handed object and their subjective experience (likeability, anthropomorphism, etc.) of the handover. / Emblematic gestures are frequently used in HHI, because their meanings are self-contained and can be understood without spoken words, such as waving. We conjecture that emblematic gestures are also applicable to humanoid robots during HRI. Several commonly used emblematic gestures are identified and transferred to a NAO humanoid robot to be evaluated by human subjects. Results show that the perceived meanings of the robot’s emblematic gestures are generally consistent with the perceived meanings of a human’s emblematic gestures, but the recognition rate in the robot case is lower. To improve this situation, two design methods are implemented, i.e. by hand-puppeteering (designers manipulate the robot’s limbs with hands as if manipulating a puppet) and by motion mapping (human gesture trajectories are captured by an RGB-D sensor, and corresponding joint trajectories are mapped to the robot’s joints). Results show that gestures designed from the motion mapping method are faster and have larger range of motion, while gestures designed from the hand-puppeteering method are perceived subjectively as more likeable and as better conveying semantic meaning. / This research contributes to the design of humanoid robots’ nonverbal behaviors with theoretically and empirically grounded methodologies, and offers better understandings of gaze cues and gestures in both HHI and HRI. Findings from this research provide instructive and valuable references for many practical application scenarios involving interactive robots. / 人形機器人從科幻小說變成現實，逐漸被應用於教育、醫療、娛樂等領域，這使得人們與人形機器人之間的交互變得至關重要。之前的研究發現，在人-機器人交互中，人們傾向於以與人溝通的方式與人形機器人溝通，這就需要人形機器人具有更加似人的行為和社交類經驗。非語言行為（例如注視和手勢）在人-人交互中是必要的溝通信號，在人-機器人交互中這些行為也同樣重要。本論文致力於研究人形機器人的非語言行為，以期促進更自然的人-機器人交互。通過廣泛的人-人交互和人-機器人交互實驗，我們研究了直觀的機器人注視行為和手勢行為，並展示了這些行為對人-機器人交互的影響。 / 注視信號在人-人傳遞物品時能夠起到微妙的調節作用，我們推測這種作用也存在於人-機器人傳遞物品的過程中。通過觀察人-人傳遞物品時物品給予者的注視行為，我們提取了幾種典型的注視行為模式，並將這些注視行為轉化到一台PR2 人形機器人上，來進行機器人向人傳遞物品的實驗。在兩次人-機器人交互實驗中，受試者接收由機器人傳遞的物品，在此過程中機器人會使用不同的注視行為模式。實驗結果表明，機器人注視哪裡以及如何改變它的注視方向，能夠顯著影響接收者伸手接物品的時間以及他們對於傳遞物品這一事件的主觀感受（喜愛程度，似人程度等）。 / 象徵性手勢廣泛應用於人-人交互中，這類手勢具有獨立的含義、可以不依賴於語言而被人理解，比如揮手。我們推測在人-機器人交互中象徵性手勢也可為人形機器人所用。我們將幾個常用的象徵性手勢轉化到一台NAO 人形機器人上，並由受試者進行評估。實驗結果表明，人們對機器人的象徵性手勢的理解與對人的象徵性手勢的理解大致相同，但在機器人情形下的識別率較低。為了改善這種狀況，我們提出了兩種設計方法，即通過手把手操縱（設計者像操縱木偶一樣操縱機器人的肢體來獲得手勢動作），和通過動作映射（用RGB-D 傳感器捕捉人的手勢軌跡，將相應的關節軌跡映射到機器人的關節上）。實驗結果表明，通過動作映射方法設計的手勢速度更快、動作幅度更大，通過手把手操縱方法設計的手勢在主觀上更令人喜愛、更好地傳達了語義含義。 / 本研究為人形機器人的非語言行為設計提供了基於理論和實驗的方法論，有助於更好地理解人-人交互和人-機器人交互中的注視行為和手勢行為。本論文的研究成果對多種涉及交互式機器人的實際應用場合具有寶貴的指導價值。 / Zheng, Minhua. / Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-159). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 07, October, 2016). / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only.

The confidence to communicate orally with others is the first requisite for verbal interaction. Anxiety which occurs in anticipation of speaking with others or while engaged in speaking hinders interaction, and is referred to as communication apprehension. This study examines levels of communication apprehension among a sample primary school population and the possible relationship between such levels and frequencies of nonverbal behaviors called self-adaptors that may be associated with the anxiety. Greater awareness of communication apprehension in children is justified in light of research that suggests it is negatively related to academic achievement in elementary school students. A four-month field~study was conducted in a Northwestern suburban elementary school by the researcher who had taught in the school for the previous seven years. The hypothesis tested was that a positive correlation exists between levels of communication apprehension and displayed self-adaptor behaviors. The study employed methodological triangulation, using both quantitative and qualitative data. An established self-report measure (MECA) consisting of a 20-item questionnaire suggesting various communication situations was administered to 42 third grade students and analyzed using descriptive statistics. Students scoring one standard deviation above the mean were identified as communication apprehensive (CA). Nervous behaviors called self-adaptors were tallied using a researcher developed measurement tool (UBSSF), and the frequencies of these behaviors correlated with the results of the self-report measure to find the predicted association. The hypothesis was not supported in this study. Complementary qualitative information also provided substantial data. This included classroom observations and videotapings of students in small group work sessions, individual recorded interviews of the CA students using film elicitation and interviews with their classroom teachers, field notes (general notations, oral data from teaching specialists, and additional demographic information), and continuing information from the apprehensive students following the conduct of the study. All qualitative data was examined for cross-situational consistency thought to be associated with communication apprehension. Significant evidence for a correlation between levels of communication apprehension and frequency of self-adaptor behaviors was not found. However, this study contributed to a greater understanding of CA by challenging currently held views on communication apprehension. Also, through the use of method triangulation, quantitative and qualitative forms of self report provided some evidence for the crosssituational consistency of CA. Communication apprehensive students were found to be aware of their anxieties and able to verbally address their fears. The phenomenological interpretation of CA student and teacher interview texts facilitated the reconstruction of the participants' perspectives. Finally, suggestions by the researcher addressed the training of teachers to raise their awareness of communication apprehension and to provide needed accommodation of CA students in the classroom.

False confessions and unproductive criminal investigations have resulted in misidentification of verbal and nonverbal deceptive cues. Further, the association of deceptive behavioral responses has not been confirmed based upon quantifiable graphological discrepancies. Guided by the 4-factor model for deceptive behavior, the purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between psycholinguistic cues and graphological spacing discrepancies. Handwriting samples were gathered from a stratified group of college students and law enforcement officers in rural Illinois and Tennessee (n = 113). The research was designed to determine whether graphological spacing discrepancies were evident in left margin indentions, word spacing, and sentence spacing. Two-way analyses of variance by ranks were conducted, combining these spacing discrepancies in a way to maximize the differences between the groups of truthful and deceptive statements. Through multiple regression analyses, the contributing variances were explained, as seen from participants' multiple psychological inventory scores and total spacing variances. Two-way analyses of variance were also conducted with the intent of discovering whether an interaction effect occurred, between deception-induced cognitive load and spontaneous or memory-related influences on graphological traits. Results were confirmed for statistically significant differences between truthful and deceptive sentences, containing spacing variances. Implications for positive social change include fewer false confessions during police investigations and interrogation reports with empirically based findings.

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 33 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 25-27).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Psychology, August 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 147-162). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-139).