Abstract
Engaging people with dementia (PWD) in meaningful activities is the key to promote their quality of life. Design towards a higher level of user engagement has been extensively studied within the human-computer interaction community, however, few extend to PWD. It is generally considered that increased richness of experiences can lead to enhanced engagement. Therefore, this paper explores the effects of rich interaction in terms of the role of system interactivity and multimodal stimuli by engaging participants in context-enhanced human-robot interaction activities. The interaction with a social robot was considered context-enhanced due to the additional responsive sensory feedback from an augmented reality display. A field study was conducted in a Dutch nursing home with 16 residents. The study followed a two by two mixed factorial design with one within-subject variable - multimodal stimuli - and one between-subject variable - system interactivity. A mixed method of video coding analysis and observational rating scales was adopted to assess user engagement comprehensively. Results disclose that when additional auditory modality was included besides the visual-tactile stimuli, participants had significantly higher scores on attitude, more positive behavioral engagement during activity, and a higher percentage of communications displayed. The multimodal stimuli also promoted social interaction between participants and the facilitator. The findings provide sufficient evidence regarding the significant role of multimodal stimuli in promoting PWD’s engagement, which could be potentially used as a motivation strategy in future research to improve emotional aspects of activity-related engagement and social interaction with the human partner.
Highlights
Dementia, a neurodegenerative disease addressed by the World Health Organization and Alzheimer’s Disease International as a public health priority [51]
To ascertain that the participants allocated to the two groups did not differ in user engagement at baseline, we performed independent sample t-tests on all rating scale items of the OME, Observed Emotional Rating Scale (OERS), and Engagement of a Person with Dementia Scale (EPWDS) gauged after the control sessions between the two groups
The results show significant main effects of multimodal stimuli level on Attitude Most of Time (Atti_M) of OME, F(1, 14) = 7.574, p = .016, η2 = .351, Visual Engagement (Vis_E) of EPWDS, F(1, 14) = 8.113, p = .013, η2 = .367, Social Engagement (Soc_E) of EPWDS, F(1, 14) = 5.011, p = .042, η2 = .264, and Overall Engagement (Eng_Sum) of EPWDS, F(1, 14) = 5.250, p = .038, η2 = .273, indicating that the attitude, visual engagement, social engagement and overall engagement of people with dementia (PWD) significantly improve when more sensory modalities are provided by the interactive system design
Summary
A neurodegenerative disease addressed by the World Health Organization and Alzheimer’s Disease International as a public health priority [51]. International Journal of Social Robotics sive care means that most PWD are eventually admitted to long-term care (LTC) facilities where they can receive quality care Such facilities can be efficient in meeting physical needs (e.g., hygiene, meals, place to live or medication use), but often fail to address psycho-social needs [26,62]. The well-being of PWD in LTC facilities is hindered, as they spend most of their time alone, disengaged, have limited meaningful social interactions, and are exposed to inappropriate sensory stimulation (e.g., lack of sensory stimulation or over-stimulating by environmental factors) This prolonged lack of engagement in sensory stimulation, physical and social activities can further lead to accelerated disease development and worse living conditions
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