The thesis explores the trend in recent years by HCI designers to create an interface which is increasingly more anthropomorphic in nature, due to advances in computer graphics and interface technologies. The thesis has researched the effects of one such manifestation of this anthropomorphic trend on the human user, which embodies the human persona, in the form of embodied agents. The thesis is anchored in the growing area of human-agent interaction studies; and how the agent's appearance in terms of their visual cues (i.e. gender, ethnicity, realism, and attractiveness levels), affects the human user interacting with these artificial entities. The aim of this thesis is to explore how the agents' visual appearance can elicit change in the user's perception and behaviour, in order to improve human-agent design, and the interaction experience for the user. The thesis extends HCI studies investigating the effect of embodied agents, by highlighting the effect of the attractiveness stereotype which can elicit various impressions, stereotypes and behavioural changes within the human user. The thesis results demonstrate that attractive agents were perceived and evaluated more positively, as well being more persuasive than the unattractive agents. Hence, the agents' attractiveness was the main visual cue which played a major role in affecting the participants' opinion and behaviour towards the agents. The thesis advances the current understanding of CASA, by providing evidence to suggest that although users may respond socially to agents; this human-agent experience is not always equal to human-human experience. The thesis concludes by stating that the CASA methodology and Media Equation require some modification and needs to be adapted when applied to human-agent interaction, and especially within the interaction-based context.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / In this study I investigate what performance as a medium can contribute to our understanding of shame's affect. Given the difficulty of defining and concretising affect according to set parameters and outcomes, critical and dynamic debates about its nature continue. Most recently, New Affect theorists such as Brian Massumi have explored the role of the body in affective meaning-making. Our current social context requires a critical engagement with the forms of affect in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the intangible structures of power and oppression, as well as of desire, interest and pleasure. My aim is to determine the ways in which performance – as a medium through which to navigate an often difficult, evasive and deeply subjective experience – can facilitate a knowledge of how bodies experience, relate to and process shame.

Currently, many researchers are looking at efficient ways to reduce energy and carbon emissions of construction materials used in buildings over their life due to its significant environmental impact. Along with operational energy, embodied energies and its associated carbon are substantial contributors in the overall sustainability assessment. The calculation of materials’ embodied energy and carbon emissions during the construction stage is a major assessment factor that needs to be considered to measure the environmental impact of materials used in the construction of buildings, which would provide designers with the ability to lower the environmental impact of buildings at the early design stage. Overall, it is rather complicated to compute embodied energy and carbon emissions due to the various factors involved. The tools and methodologies, listed in the literature, are rather imperfect as they tend to overgeneralize. The equipment used, fuel needed, and electricity required for each type of construction material varies from one location to another and thus embodied energy used, and carbon produced will differ for each construction project. Moreover, the method used in manufacturing, transporting and putting in place these materials will have significant influence on their environmental impact. This anomaly has made it difficult to calculate or even benchmark the usage of such factors. This thesis proposes an integrated model aimed at calculating embodied energies, embodied carbon and associated costs generated by construction materials based on such variability. This thesis presents a systematic approach that uses an efficient method of calculation to provide new insight for the selection of construction materials and equipment required to place them for buildings. Such assessment will aid in reducing the environmental impact of construction. The proposed model will be developed in a BIM environment. The quantification of materials’ energy is determined over the three main stages of their lifecycle: manufacturing, transporting, and placing. The proposed model will use multiple databases to calculate the energy used by manufacturing, transporting, and placing construction materials. By identifying the machinery required, an accurate calculation is achieved through geospatial data analysis. The proposed model can automatically calculate the distances between the material suppliers and construction sites to increase the accuracy of its outcome. Based on such variables, the proposed model provides designers with a list of equipment as to minimize the embodied energy and carbon produced by materials used in constructing buildings. Additionally, the proposed model has the ability to calculate the environmental cost impact of using specific building materials. Overall, this thesis aims to help researchers and the construction industry in reducing the environmental impact of construction activities through the selection of materials and the determination of machines required to achieve that goal.

Domestic IoT appliances like smart speakers, smart locks and robot vacuum cleaners are usually connected through smartphone apps to provide additional functionality and remote control. Although smartphones have many different sensors and actuators, these apps provide a primarily graphical user interface with these appliances. To explore a more somatically engaging experience the prototype JoyTilt was designed, developed and tested with users. JoyTilt enables its user to control a robot vacuum cleaner like a toy car by tilting their phone in the direction they want it to go. This study found that the participants had their gaze focused on the robotic vacuum cleaner while controlling it and that the participants had both positive and negative bodily experiences with JoyTilt. Interviews with the participants provide suggestions for balancing control of robot vacuum cleaners and keeping the robot’s autonomy using JoyTilt. In this study the aesthetics of the material, choice of materials and choice of interaction model come together in the design of JoyTilt to shape the human-robot relationship. Lastly, the thesis highlights the values of further considering the bodily experience when designing apps. / Uppkopplade produkter för hemmabruk så som smarta högtalare, smarta lås och larm eller robotdammsugare kopplas till våra smartphones via appar som möjliggör ytterligare funktioner, exempelvis fjärrstyrning och schemaläggning. Trots att smartphones innehåller en mängd olika sensorer används i regel primärt grafiskt gränssnitt i dessa appar. Genom att designa, utveckla och testa prototypen JoyTilt utforskas en somaestetisk användarupplevelse med fokus på den fysiska upplevelsen. Med appen JoyTilt kan en robotdammsugare styras likt en radiostyrd bil genom att luta smartphonen. I testerna med JoyTilt hade deltagarna sin blick fästa på robotdammsugaren när de styrde den. Deltagarna hade både positiva och negativa kroppsliga upplevelser av Joytilt. Från intervjuerna med deltagarna kom förslag på sätt att balansera kontroll av robotdammsugaren med dess autonomi med hjälp av JoyTilt. Val av designmaterial, dess estetik och interaktionsmodell bidrog till utformningen av JoyTilt som i sin tur påverkade relationen mellan människa och robot. Slutligen understryker den här studien värdet av att ta den kroppsliga upplevelsen i beaktning och nyttja det ofta förbisedda fysiska designutrymmet i appdesign.

Three studies examined the impact of social stimuli on visual attention. Chapter two confirmed that, hands, feet, and bodies exhibited equivalent attentional pull in a dot probe detection, two-alternative forced choice paradigm. Chapter three utilized a Posner style covert attentional cueing paradigm to examine the impact of directed human action (throwing a ball) on spatial attention. We manipulated the effect of context by including social (humans) or non-social (trees) flanking images and probed the uniquely social nature of the processing in this task by including individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a group with known social deficits, as a comparison group. We also manipulated predictability using predictive and non-predictive cue blocks between subjects. Participants with and without ASD demonstrated similar cueing effects when cues were predictive. ASD participants showed no cueing advantage when cues were non-predictive while neurotypical participants experienced cueing only in social contexts when cues were non-predictive – consistent with automatic social processing. Intelligence as measured by the FSIQ from the WAIS 4 was also analyzed. Unexpectedly, higher IQ resulted in slower RTs with the ASD group. We examined this relationship further by examining severity of diagnosis measured by ADOS-G and FSIQ in participants with ASD. In a final study we looked at the relationship between RT and eye movements in visual search for social stimuli like faces and bodies. Consistent with previous results, faces resulted in faster RTs when they were the targets. They also elicited more first fixations and shorter fixation durations. Faces were not, however, more distracting when they appeared in irrelevant singleton frames. Unexpectedly, the bodies images used in this experiment did not result in attentional capture. Possible reasons for this are discussed. / Dissertation / Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) / As humans, other humans are among the most important things we visually perceive. They are sources of threat, alliance, uncertainty, and love. Because we cannot attend to all of the things we see at once, evolution has prepared us with mental traits that favour rapid processing of complex social scenes. Across three studies, we examine how other humans affect our attention. In the first study we confirm that human bodies and their parts (like feet or hands) are equally capable of drawing our attention. Our second study examines the ability of dynamic human poses to direct our attention in the direction of the depicted action. We note that an implied social interaction leads to better performance among typically developing individuals, but leads to deficits in individuals with autism spectrum disorder, a condition characterized by social delays and impairments. Finally, we look at how important social images, like human faces or bodies, unconsciously attract and influence our eyes movements when searching among distracting images.

Since the cognitive revolution during the last century the mind has been conceived of as being computer-like. Like a computer, the brain was assumed to be a physical structure (hardware) upon which a computational mind (software) was built. The mind was seen as a collection of independent programs which each have their own specific tasks, or modules. These modules took sensory input "data" and transduced it into language-like representations which were used in mental computations. Recently, a new conception of the mind has developed, grounded cognition. According to this model, sensory stimulus is saved in the original format in which it was received and recalled using association mechanisms. Rather than representations being language-like they are instead multimodal. The manipulation of these multimodal representations requires processing distributed throughout the brain. A new holistic model for mental architecture has developed in which the concerted activity of the brain's modal systems produces functional systems which are intimately codependent with one another. The purpose of this thesis is to explore both the modular and multimodal theories of mental architecture. Each will be described in detail along with their supporting paradigms, cognitivism and grounded cognition. After my expositions I will offer support for my own position regarding these two theories before suggesting avenues for future research.

Past research has shown that there is a relationship between body posture and cognitive processes. However, postures used with technological devices has not been studied more extensively. The purpose of this study was to examine posture effects when using a mobile device on interpretation bias, mood, and physical tension. Each participant was randomly assigned one of three conditions: sitting slumped, sitting upright, or lying down. Participants were asked to complete the Scrambled Sentences Task (SST), a task of unscrambling emotional and neutral sentences, to measure their interpretation bias. Additional questions were asked to measure the participant's physical tension and mood. Results suggested no significant differences in interpretation bias depending on posture. There was no significant difference in the performance of unscrambling emotional sentences compared to neutral ones for sitting slumped and sitting upright. When lying down, participants unscrambled fewer neutral sentences compared to emotional ones. Physical tension was found to be a mediator for the relationship between posture (slumped and upright) and mood. The results of this study provide insight of possible confounding variables influencing the relationship between posture and mood.It additionally showed that emotional content is processed differently compared to neutral content when lying down. Further research is needed to understand how physical tension caused by posture being altered when using mobile device affects psychological well-being.

Prevention is a central tenet of modern healthcare. New ways of informing, educating, and allowing patients to keep track of their health are continually developing. Integrating technology that bridges the gap between healthcare providers and their patients is essential in today's digital age. One emerging idea is the use of home healthcare embodied agents. Embodied agents are conservational interfaces that can interact and look like human beings. They can exhibit both verbal and non-verbal language cues and be capable of having a natural conversation. This kind of technology could help both patients and healthcare providers by giving patients a helpful assistant that can educate and take care of particular healthcare needs through conversations with the patient. This could potentially improve patient outcomes, thereby reducing trips to the healthcare provider's office and relieving the burden on physicians and other healthcare providers. This research will focus on home healthcare embodied agents' priorities and the opportunities that this technology can present. A literature review was done to examine the current use of embodied agents in home healthcare settings to establish their present capabilities and applications. Additionally, the strategies/techniques used by home healthcare workers interacting with patients were investigated. By examining the provider-patient relationship and the use of home healthcare embodied agents in tandem, related findings were identified and potential gaps in current research were found that may help direct future exploration.

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