Yes / Automated tools to speed up the process of evidence synthesis are increasingly apparent within health behaviour research, however, frameworks to evaluate the development and implementation of such tools are not routinely used. This commentary explores the potential of the Non-adoption, Abandonment, Scale-up, Spread and Sustainability framework (NASSS; Greenhalgh et al., 2017) for supporting automated evidence synthesis in health behaviour change by applying it to the ongoing Human Behaviour-Change Project, which aims to revolutionise evidence synthesis within behaviour change intervention research. To increase the relevance of NASSS for health behaviour change, we recommend i) terminology changes (‘condition’ to ‘behaviour’ and ‘patient’ to ‘end user’) and ii) a that it is used prospectively so that complexities can be addressed iteratively. We draw three conclusions about i) the need to specify the organisations that will use the technology, ii) identifying what to do if interdependencies fail and iii) even though we have focused on automated evidence synthesis, NASSS would arguably be beneficial for technology developments in health behaviour change more generally, particularly for invention development (e.g. for a behaviour change app).

Goal-directed behavior requires integrated mental representations of perceptions and actions. The neurophysiological underpinnings of these processes, however, are not yet understood. It is particularly undetermined, which oscillatory activities in which brain regions are involved in the management of perception-action representations. We examine this question with a focus on response inhibition processes and show that the dynamics of perception-action representations reflected in theta band activity (TBA) are particularly evident in the supplementary motor area and the occipito-temporal cortex. Mental representations coded in alpha band activity (ABA) during perception-action integration are associated with the occipito-temporal cortex. Crucially, perception-action representations are exchanged between theta and alpha frequency bands. The results imply that ABA functions as dynamic top-down control over binding, retrieval and reconfiguration processes during response inhibition, which in turn are reflected by TBA. Our study thus highlights how the interplay of oscillatory activity enables the management of perception-action representations for goal-directed behavior.

Interpersonal touch is intimately related to the emotional bond between the touch giver and the touch receiver. Which bodily regions we touch in those individuals in our social network is relationship specific. Perception of interpersonal touch is altered in psychiatric disorders characterised by body image disturbances (BIDs). Here, we examined whether the ‘imagined’ experience of social touch in individuals with BIDs is body topography- and relationship-specific. By using an interactive media mobile App, the Virtual Touch Toolkit, high versus low levels of BIDs participants completed heatmaps of full-body virtual avatars, to indicate the body regions they find soothing/unpleasant to be touched by a loved one versus an acquaintance. Self-reports of interoceptive awareness and dysmorphic concerns were also measured. Overall, imagined touch was rated as the most soothing when received from a loved one, and also when this was delivered to ‘social’ body regions. The importance of the social relationship for the imagined tactile interactions was particularly evident for the high levels of BIDs group, with greater problems with interoceptive awareness predicting higher soothing touch ratings when this was received by a loved one. Despite the evidence that imagined bodily contacts between meaningful people is the most pleasant for socially acceptable bodily regions, our findings may suggest a greater sensitivity to relation-specific bodily patterns of social touch particularly in the high level of BIDs group. Heightened interoceptive awareness may also play a key role in this experience of bodily affective contacts. Future research for body-oriented therapy for BIDs is encouraged to systematically probe the efficacy of imagined social touch interaction protocols which use more plausible, ecological, scenarios where touch is delivered by loved ones and to socially acceptable bodily regions.

Yes / Covid-19, a corona virus, has maintained its momentum in spreading among communities. In this context of social crisis, this study seeks to identify the reasons for the partial failure to fulfill the intended goal of lockdown, and to formulate an inclusive behavioral model reflecting comprehensive human behavior and social psychology. In order to answer the research questions, this study has conducted extensive interviews among individuals who were targets of the lockdown system. From this exploratory and qualitative investigation, researchers have recognized four paradigms as the key to understanding human behavior and social psychology in violating lockdown as a social isolation system during this period of crisis. The identified parameters depicting social behavior are: Derogation and Argument (SDA), Tangible Need and Deficiency (TND), Intangible Desire and Expectancy (IDE), and Evaluation of Benefit and Loss (UBL). Finally, as a comprehensive guideline, a grounded theory of the social behavior ‘paradigm for lockdown violation (PLV)’ is explored as the reason for the violation of the social system.

Yes / This paper presents research into perceived quality of vehicle body split lines / gaps. The survey based methodology combined direct attribute evaluation and choice experiments with multiple test cases, based on static images generated from parametric CAD virtual prototypes of a specific vehicle. The study systematically tested for perception without and with awareness and the Hawthorne bias, showing significant effects. Statistical analysis provided clear evidence of the user preference for smaller gap size, and as such supports target and tolerance setting for the body gap.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2009. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Depuis de nombreuses années, nous nous sommes efforcés de comprendre le comportement humain et nos interactions avec l'environnement sociotechnique. Grâce à l'avancée de nos connaissances dans ce domaine, nous avons contribué à la conception de technologies et de processus de travail nouveaux ou améliorés. Historiquement, une part importante du travail d'analyse des interactions sociales fut entreprise au sein des sciences sociales. Cependant, la simulation informatique a apporté un nouvel outil pour tenter de comprendre et de modéliser les comportements humains. En utilisant une approche à base d'agents, cette présentation décrit mon travail sur la construction de modèles informatiques du comportement humain pour guider la conception par la simulation. A l'aide d'exemples issus de projets des deux domaines d'application que sont la gestion des crises et de l'urgence et la gestion de l'énergie, je décris comment mon travail aborde certains problèmes centraux à la simulation sociale à base d'agents. Le premier concerne le processus par lequel nous développons ces modèles. Le second problème provient de la nature des systèmes sociotechniques. Les sociétés humaines constituent un exemple parfait de système complexe possédant des caractéristiques d'auto-organisation et d'adaptabilité, et affichant des phénomènes émergents tels que la coopération et la robustesse. Je décris comment la théorie des systèmes complexes peut être appliquée pour améliorer notre compréhension des systèmes sociotechniques, et comment nos interactions au niveau microscopique mènent à l'émergence d'une conscience mutuelle pour la résolution de problèmes. A partir de systèmes de simulation à base d'agents, je montre comment la conscience du contexte peut être modélisée. En terme de perspectives, j'expliquerai comment la hausse de la prévalence des agents artificiels dans notre société nous forcera à considérer de nouveaux types d'interactions et de comportements coopératifs.

Animated agent technology has been rapidly developed to provide ubiquitously psychological and functional benefits for fulfilling communicative goals. However, the character motions of most character-centered models based on pre-stored movement, finite state machine and scripted conditional logic are generally restrictive. The major drawback lies in the lack of maturity of integrating the elements between personality, emotion and behaviour. To bridge the gap between cognitive and behavioural elements, we examine the connections between human personality, emotion, movement and cartoon modeling for the agent design. Human personality and emotional behaviour are the essences in the recognition of a believable synthetic character. Personality and emotion come from the storylines and result in characters’ motions. Cartoon animations successfully engage the audience and create emotional connections with the spectators. However, even a sophisticated animator often faces some difficulties while performing a very laborious task to simulate an emotion- and personality-rich character. This thesis focuses on exploring effective techniques to extract personality and emotion features for a high-level control of character movements. A hierarchical fuzzy rule-based system was constructed, in which personality and emotion were mapped into the body’s movement zones of a character. This facilitates agent designers to control the personality and emotion of a dynamic synthetic character. The system was then applied to a Narrative Intelligent system and extended to an Ambient Intelligent environment. An innovative storyboard-structured storytelling method was devised by using story scripts and action descriptions in a form similar to the content description of storyboards to predict specific personality and emotion. As software or device agents evolve into the Ambient Intelligence, new concepts for effective agent presentations and delegating control are necessary to minimise the human’s tasks and interventions in the complex and dynamic environment. A novel customizable personalised agent framework was developed by utilising the spirit of cartoon animation to match each user’s profile in the form of a cartoon reciprocal agent. As a result, users could explicitly modify personality and emotion values to change the psychology traits of the agent, which would affect their appearance and behaviour through body posture expression. An evaluation of the system was conducted to verify the effectiveness and the applicability in both Narrative and Ambient intelligent agent frameworks. The significance of this research is that applying higher cognitive factors to animated characters can lead to a better animation design tool and reduce strenuous animation production efforts in agent designs. It will also enable animated characters to embody more adaptive, flexible and stylised performance.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2002. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Diss. Linköping : Univ., 2002.