Dialogue with a conversational agent promotes children's story comprehension via enhancing engagement.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Xu Y
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9299009 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The present study provides experimental evidence regarding 4-6-year-old children's visual processing of animated versus static illustrations in storybooks. Thirty nine participants listened to an animated and a static book, both three times, while eye movements were registered with an eye-tracker. Outcomes corroborate the hypothesis that specifically motion is what attracts children's attention while looking at illustrations. It is proposed that animated illustrations that are well matched to the text of the story guide children to those parts of the illustration that are important for understanding the story. This may explain why animated books resulted in better comprehension than static books.
| S-EPMC5062825 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundCardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) are a group of interrelated conditions, including heart failure and diabetes, that increase the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic complications. The rising number of Australians with CMDs has necessitated new strategies for those managing these conditions, such as digital health interventions. The effectiveness of digital health interventions in supporting people with CMDs is dependent on the extent to which users engage with the tools. Augmenting digital health interventions with conversational agents, technologies that interact with people using natural language, may enhance engagement because of their human-like attributes. To date, no systematic review has compiled evidence on how design features influence the engagement of conversational agent-enabled interventions supporting people with CMDs. This review seeks to address this gap, thereby guiding developers in creating more engaging and effective tools for CMD management.ObjectiveThe aim of this systematic review is to synthesize evidence pertaining to conversational agent-enabled intervention design features and their impacts on the engagement of people managing CMD.MethodsThe review is conducted in accordance with the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions and reported in accordance with PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. Searches will be conducted in the Ovid (Medline), Web of Science, and Scopus databases, which will be run again prior to manuscript submission. Inclusion criteria will consist of primary research studies reporting on conversational agent-enabled interventions, including measures of engagement, in adults with CMD. Data extraction will seek to capture the perspectives of people with CMD on the use of conversational agent-enabled interventions. Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal tools will be used to evaluate the overall quality of evidence collected.ResultsThis review was initiated in May 2023 and was registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) in June 2023, prior to title and abstract screening. Full-text screening of articles was completed in July 2023 and data extraction began August 2023. Final searches were conducted in April 2024 prior to finalizing the review and the manuscript was submitted for peer review in July 2024.ConclusionsThis review will synthesize diverse observations pertaining to conversational agent-enabled intervention design features and their impacts on engagement among people with CMDs. These observations can be used to guide the development of more engaging conversational agent-enabled interventions, thereby increasing the likelihood of regular intervention use and improved CMD health outcomes. Additionally, this review will identify gaps in the literature in terms of how engagement is reported, thereby highlighting areas for future exploration and supporting researchers in advancing the understanding of conversational agent-enabled interventions.Trial registrationPROSPERO CRD42023431579; https://tinyurl.com/55cxkm26.International registered report identifier (irrid)DERR1-10.2196/52973.
| S-EPMC11339562 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This study provides a framework for measuring conversational dynamics between conversational partners (interlocutors). Conversations from 20 pairs of young, normal-hearing, native-Danish talkers were recorded when speaking in both quiet and noise (70 dBA sound pressure level [SPL]) and in Danish and English. Previous studies investigating the intervals from when one talker stops talking to when the next one starts, termed floor-transfer offsets (FTOs), suggest that typical turn-taking requires interlocutors to predict when the current talker will finish their turn. We hypothesized that adding noise and/or speaking in a second language (L2) would increase the communication difficulty and result in longer and more variable FTOs. The median and interquartile range of FTOs increased slightly in noise, and in L2, there was a small increase in interquartile range but a small decrease in the median of FTO durations. It took the participants longer to complete the task in both L2 and noise, indicating increased communication difficulty. The average duration of interpausal units, that is, units of connected speech surrounded by silences of 180 ms or more, increased by 18% in noise and 8% in L2. These findings suggest that talkers held their turn for longer, allowing more time for speech understanding and planning. In L2, participants spoke slower, and in both L2 and noise, they took fewer turns. These changes in behavior may have offset some of the increased difficulty when communicating in noise or L2. We speculate that talkers prioritize the maintenance of turn-taking timing over other speech measures.
| S-EPMC8256248 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We examined the role of mental imagery skills on story comprehension in 150 fifth graders (10- to 12-year-olds), when reading a narrative book chapter with alternating words and pictures (i.e., text blocks were alternated by one- or two-page picture spreads). A parallel group design was used, in which we compared our experimental book version, in which pictures were used to replace parts of the corresponding text, to two control versions, i.e., a text-only version and a version with the full story text and all pictures. Analyses showed an interaction between mental imagery and book version: children with higher mental imagery skills outperformed children with lower mental imagery skills on story comprehension after reading the experimental narrative. This was not the case for both control conditions. This suggests that children's mental imagery skills significantly contributed to the mental representation of the story that they created, by successfully integrating information from both words and pictures. The results emphasize the importance of mental imagery skills for explaining individual variability in reading development. Implications for educational practice are that we should find effective ways to instruct children how to "read" pictures and how to develop and use their mental imagery skills. This will probably contribute to their mental models and therefore their story comprehension.
| S-EPMC5075566 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Social interaction is fundamental to the development of various aspects of "we-ness". Previous research has focused on the role the content of interaction plays in establishing feelings of unity, belongingness and shared reality (a cluster of variables referred to as solidarity here). The present paper is less concerned with content, but focuses on the form of social interaction. We propose that the degree to which conversations flow smoothly or not is, of itself, a cue to solidarity. We test this hypothesis in samples of unacquainted and acquainted dyads who communicate via headsets. Conversational flow is disrupted by introducing a delay in the auditory feedback (vs. no delay). Results of three studies show that smoothly coordinated conversations (compared with disrupted conversations and a control condition) increase feelings of belonging and perceptions of group entitativity, independently of conversation content. These effects are driven by the subjective experience of conversational flow. Our data suggest that this process occurs largely beyond individuals' control. We conclude that the form of social interaction is a powerful cue for inferring group solidarity. Implications for the impact of modern communication technology on developing a shared social identity are discussed.
| S-EPMC3827030 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundDietary supplements (DS) have been widely used by consumers, but the information around the efficacy and safety of DS is disparate or incomplete, thus creating barriers for consumers to find information effectively. Conversational agent (CA) systems have been applied to healthcare domain, but there is no such system to answer consumers regarding DS use, although widespread use of DS. In this study, we develop the first CA system for DS use.MethodsOur CA system for DS use developed on the MindMeld framework, consists of three components: question understanding, DS knowledge base, and answer generation. We collected and annotated 1509 questions to develop a natural language understanding module (e.g., question type classifier, named entity recognizer) which was then integrated into MindMeld framework. CA then queries the DS knowledge base (i.e., iDISK) and generates answers using rule-based slot filling techniques. We evaluated the algorithms of each component and the CA system as a whole.ResultsCNN is the best question classifier with an F1 score of 0.81, and CRF is the best named entity recognizer with an F1 score of 0.87. The system achieves an overall accuracy of 81% and an average score of 1.82 with succ@3 + score of 76.2% and succ@2 + of 66% approximately.ConclusionThis study develops the first CA system for DS use using the MindMeld framework and iDISK domain knowledge base.
| S-EPMC9264487 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This study evaluates the comprehension of generalized conversational implicatures (GCI) in children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), using a GCI test constructed based on the Levinson model, which distinguishes between three types of implicatures: type Q (or scalar: "what is not referred to does not occur"); type I ("by default, it is not necessary to say what can be assumed"); and type M ("if someone is expressing something in a not very simple or marked way, it is because s/he is describing a situation that is not very typical, frequent, or prototypical"). In addition to the ASD group (n = 22), two comparison groups were utilized: a group matched on chronological age with the ASD group, but with a higher linguistic age (TCD group, n = 22), and a group matched on linguistic age with the ASD group, but with a lower chronological age (TLD group, n = 22). In all cases, linguistic age was assessed with the Peabody test. The performance of the three groups on the GCI test was compared (overall and on each type of implicature), and performance on the three types of implicature was compared within each group. The ASD group obtained worse performance than the other two groups, both overall and for each implicature type, without also obtaining differences in performance on the three implicature types. The TCD group obtained better performance than the TLD group on overall performance, but not on each implicature type, and both groups obtained lower performance on the type M heuristics than on the type I. Based on these results, the children with ASD in our study presented limitations in the comprehension of the three types of GCI, but it was not possible to obtain evidence for an inferential continuum of the three types of GCI. However, in the two typical development groups, this evidence was obtained, leading us to propose an inferential continuum model based on the different levels of dependence on the context of each of the three types of implicatures, with type M implicatures being more contextually dependent.
| S-EPMC5859064 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundDigital applications are commonly used to support mental health and well-being. However, successfully retaining and engaging users to complete digital interventions is challenging, and comorbidities such as chronic pain further reduce user engagement. Digital conversational agents (CAs) may improve user engagement by applying engagement principles that have been implemented within in-person care settings.ObjectiveTo evaluate user retention and engagement with an artificial intelligence-led digital mental health app (Wysa for Chronic Pain) that is customized for individuals managing mental health symptoms and coexisting chronic pain.MethodsIn this ancillary survival analysis of a clinical trial, participants included 51 adults who presented to a tertiary care center for chronic musculoskeletal pain, who endorsed coexisting symptoms of depression or anxiety (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System score of ≥55 for depression or anxiety), and initiated onboarding to an 8-week subscription of Wysa for Chronic Pain. The study outcomes were user retention, defined as revisiting the app each week and on the last day of engagement, and user engagement, defined by the number of sessions the user completed.ResultsUsers engaged in a cumulative mean of 33.3 sessions during the 8-week study period. The survival analysis depicted a median user retention period (i.e., time to complete disengagement) of 51 days, with the usage of a morning check-in feature having a significant relationship with a longer retention period (P=.001).ConclusionsOur findings suggest that user retention and engagement with a CBT-based CA built for users with chronic pain is higher than standard industry metrics. These results have clear implications for addressing issues of suboptimal engagement of digital health interventions and improving access to care for chronic pain. Future work should use these findings to inform the design of evidence-based interventions for individuals with chronic pain and to enhance user retention and engagement of digital health interventions more broadly.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT04640090; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04640090.
| S-EPMC9171603 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The neural correlates of theory of mind (ToM) are typically studied using paradigms which require participants to draw explicit, task-related inferences (e.g., in the false belief task). In a natural setup, such as listening to stories, false belief mentalizing occurs incidentally as part of narrative processing. In our experiment, participants listened to auditorily presented stories with false belief passages (implicit false belief processing) and immediately after each story answered comprehension questions (explicit false belief processing), while neural responses were measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). All stories included (among other situations) one false belief condition and one closely matched control condition. For the implicit ToM processing, we modeled the hemodynamic response during the false belief passages in the story and compared it to the hemodynamic response during the closely matched control passages. For implicit mentalizing, we found activation in typical ToM processing regions, that is the angular gyrus (AG), superior medial frontal gyrus (SmFG), precuneus (PCUN), middle temporal gyrus (MTG) as well as in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) billaterally. For explicit ToM, we only found AG activation. The conjunction analysis highlighted the left AG and MTG as well as the bilateral IFG as overlapping ToM processing regions for both implicit and explicit modes. Implicit ToM processing during listening to false belief passages, recruits the left SmFG and billateral PCUN in addition to the "mentalizing network" known form explicit processing tasks.
| S-EPMC6869249 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Previous research showed that story illustrations fail to enhance young preschoolers' memories when they accompany a pre-recorded story (e.g., Greenhoot and Semb, 2008). In this study we tested whether young children might benefit from illustrations in a more interactive story-reading context. For instance, illustrations might influence parent-child reading interactions, and thus children's story comprehension and recall. Twenty-six 3.5- to 4.5-year-olds and their primary caregivers were randomly assigned to an Illustrated or Non-Illustrated story-reading condition, and parents were instructed to "read or tell the story" as they normally would read with their child. Children recalled the story after a distracter and again after 1 week. Analyses of the story-reading interactions showed that the illustrations prompted more interactive story reading and more parent and child behaviors known to predict improved literacy outcomes. Furthermore, in the first memory interview, children in the Illustrated condition recalled more story events than those in the Non-Illustrated condition. Story reading measures predicted recall, but did not completely account for picture effects. These results suggest that illustrations enhance young preschoolers' story recall in an interactive story reading context, perhaps because the joint attention established in this context supports children's processing of the illustrations.
| S-EPMC4106274 | biostudies-other