Contingent Interactions Research Articles

Examining children's perceptions of AI-enabled interactive media characters

Young children may develo\\attachments or perceive realism in television characters due to interactive techniques like faux eye contact and pretend interactions during video watching. As artificial intelligence (AI) advances, the potential for real-time, contingent interactions with characters has emerged, potentially reshaping children's perceptions of these characters as responsive entities. This article presents findings from two experiments conducted as part of a multi-year project aimed at integrating AI into television animation series. In this project, the main characters of the series ask children questions, listen to their responses, and provide responsive feedback. The findings suggest that interactive characters, which engage viewers through contingent dialogues, are perceived as more human-like. Follow-up analyses also revealed that the opportunities for contingent interactions with the media character were the primary reason that drove such perceptions. This study contributes to advancing understanding of the mechanisms underlying children's evolving relationships with interactive media characters, a trend likely to gain prominence in the years to come.

Connected, programmed, and immobilised: a mobile ethnography of platform-mediated food delivery in Seoul

Against the rise of mobility platforms, this paper explores the practices and politics of mobility arising from the everyday infrastructural functioning of Baemin, the largest food delivery platform in South Korea. While the literature on food delivery platforms centres on changing labour relations, platform workers do not merely represent a new type of labour; they likewise form a critical conduit in the urban logistics system. Platform-mediated food delivery can be therefore conceptualised as a moving assemblage of heterogeneous entities that constitutes an urban infrastructure. Having emerged as an urban mobility regime, food delivery platforms increasingly enact a form of governance, enabling a particular mode of circulation and movements. Engaging with the mobility framework, combined with critical infrastructure scholarship, this paper seeks to uncover the politics of im/mobility involved in the creation of a ceaselessly flowing city envisaged by Baemin. It identifies three forms of mobilities—connected, programmed, and immobilised—produced through contingent interactions between moving bodies, technologies, and the environment, which could amount to tethering effects. Integrating empirical materials from multimethod mobile ethnography in Seoul, it presents on-the-ground accounts of practices, interactions, and sensations gathered around the Baemin-mediated food delivery.

Real Democracy: A Critical Realist Approach to Democracy and Democratic Theory

This article presents an alternative general model of democracy to traditional minimalist (electoral and liberal) and deliberative theories by drawing from critical realist philosophical thought. Realist or real democracy is proposed as a societal system where preconditions exist to fully empower all citizens to realize their individual capabilities. This includes empowerment opportunities at the ballot box - but also other preconditions such as health, educational and living standards. Real democracy also separates democratic preconditions from democratic outcomes. Democratic outcomes require the absence of inequalities in power as result from the contingent interaction preconditions and human agency. The new approach is argued to provide a more holistic and dynamic concept of democracy which is also more grounded in the everyday experience of the citizen compared to traditional approaches. It reconnects democracy with theories of human development and enables a new classification of political regimes and conception of democratic politics. An initial empirical mapping of patterns of global real democracy shows evidence of rising preconditions since 1990 – but stagnation since 2010 and some signs of decline. Democratic outcomes by socio-economic position saw the most notable decline.

How does social contingency facilitate vocabulary development?

Previous research shows that infants of parents who are more likely to engage in socially contingent interactions with them tend to have larger vocabularies. An open question is how social contingency facilitates vocabulary growth. One possibility is that parents who speak in response to their infants more often produce larger amount of language input, which accelerates vocabulary growth. Another possibility is that the simplicity of contingent language input is especially suitable to support early word learning. A third possibility is that more evidence of the communicative nature of language, achieved through frequent contingent responses, helps infants build a link between their own words or vocalizations and others' behaviors. This link may lead to a better understanding of the communicative nature of language and further language advances, including vocabulary growth. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we analyzed the relations between parent-infant interactions when infants were 9 months and their vocabulary size at 12 months, using a naturalistic corpus. Our findings show that the frequency of parents' verbal contingent responses predicts receptive vocabulary size at 12 months and this predictive relation is unlikely to be due to the amount of language input or the simplicity of language within socially contingent interactions. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Infants of parents who respond to their vocalizations more often during the first year of life tend to have larger vocabularies in the second year. It is an open question what drives the predictive relation between parents' responsiveness and infants' vocabulary; we tested three hypotheses that offer competing explanations. More responsive parents might provide (1) more language input, (2) simpler language input, (3) more evidence of the communicative nature of language (via frequent responses). We find support for the third hypothesis; the frequency of parents' responses predicts infants' vocabularies above and beyond the amount and simplicity of language input.

Reconciling risk as threat and opportunity: The social construction of risk in boardrooms.

Board directing is a continuous process of risk analysis and control in response to the duality of risk as threat and opportunity. Judgments are made and remade to simultaneously reduce the potential for damaging threats (e.g., fraud, reputation damage), while exploiting opportunities (e.g., new product development, mergers and acquisitions). Adopting an institutional logics approach, we explore this process of risk analysis and control through the varied subject identities (e.g., directorial roles), risk management practices (the procedures and tools used to identify, assess, and control risk), and risk objects (the product of risk identification, assessment, and control, e.g., a risk matrix or register) of boards. We argue that the contingent interaction between these identities, practices, and objects inform the "risk logic" of a board, which may draw attention to the notion of risk as threat, risk as opportunity, or both threat and opportunity. Using the testimony of 30 executive and nonexecutive directors that represent 62 companies from a range of public, private, and third-sector organizations, we contribute to the literature on the microfoundations of risk analysis in organizations by shining a light on how board directors understand, assess, control, and ultimately govern risk in organizations.

Actor Network Theory and Sensing Governance: From Causation to Correlation

AbstractThis article is organized in four sections. The first section introduces sensing governance in terms of the governance of effects rather than causation, focusing on the work of Bruno Latour in establishing the problematic of contingent interaction, rather than causal depth, as key to emergent effects, which can be unexpected and catastrophic. The second section considers in more depth how sensing governance enables politics by other means through putting greater emphasis on relations of interaction, rather than on ontologies of being, and links the methodological approach of sensing governance closely to actor network assumptions that disavow structures of causation. The final two sections analyze how correlation works to reveal new agencies and processes of emergence and how new technologies have been deployed in this area, providing some examples of how the shift from causal relations to sensing effects has begun to alter governmental approaches.

Contingency and Multimodal Communication in the Learning Environment

From a Vygotskian (1997) theoretical perspective, teachers and learners, of necessity, need to listen and respond to one another in a meaningful way, which, significantly, entails some form of role reversal (i.e., student as teacher and teacher as student). van Lier (1996) furthered this approach in relation to second language (L2) classroom environments, emphasizing the need for conversational symmetry between students and teacher so that participation by all includes contributing individual and collective thoughts and experiences in relation to the content of a lesson, or ‘contingent interaction’, which van Lier also based on a similar approach: Instructional Conversation. Furthermore, van Lier linked his perspective to Vygotsky’s (1987) central premise that language (signs) constitutes the primary mediational tool with which we navigate ourselves and the world, which includes not only meaning (znachenie) but sense (smysl), and as applied in the case of the current study to L2 immigrant children growing up in a multilingual society. Moreover, although Vygotsky had recognized the role of proto-gesture (e.g., an infant reaching for an object that is then brought by an adult) as perhaps the earliest form of semiotic mediation, he did not concentrate on nonverbal forms of mediation, nor did van Lier. However, the current research hopes to demonstrate that speech together with nonverbal forms of communication, especially in combination (multimodal ensembles) can constitute an important aspect of creating L2 contingent interaction, and following van Lier, as connected to the Zone of Proximal Development. Additionally, emotional development (Perezhivanie) as tied to contingency and as an aspect of cooperative social relations is given treatment. Data for the study come from a second-grade classroom of L2 learners of English engaged in a read-aloud lesson directed towards L2 language and literacy development.

From social contingency to verbal reference: A constructivist hypothesis.

In the first year of life, infants' word learning is slow, laborious, and requires repeated exposure to word-referent co-occurrences. In contrast, by 14-18 months, infants learn words from just a few labeling events, use joint attention and eye gaze to decipher word meaning, and begin to use speech to communicate about absent things. We propose that this remarkable advancement in word learning results from attaining a referential understanding of words-that words are linked to mental representations and used intentionally to communicate about real-world entities. We suggest that verbal reference is supported by codeveloping conceptual, social, representational, and statistical learning capacities. We also propose that infants' recognition of this tri-directional link between words, referents, and mental representations is enabled by their experience participating in and observing socially contingent interactions. Understanding verbal reference signals a qualitative shift in infants' word learning. This shift enables infants to bootstrap word meanings from syntax and semantics, learn novel words and facts from nonostensive communication, and make inferences about speakers' epistemic competence based on their language production. In this paper, we review empirical findings across multiple facets of infant cognition and propose a novel developmental theory of verbal reference. Finally, we suggest new directions of empirical research that may provide stronger and more direct evidence for our theory and contribute to our understanding of the development of verbal reference and language-mediated learning in infancy and beyond. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Contingent interaction with a television character promotes children's science learning and engagement

While educational television or video programs are important and accessible learning resources for young children, the lack of contingent interaction afforded within this type of programming may limit how much children learn from them. In this project, we leveraged natural language processing technologies to enable contingent interaction between children and a television character, with the goal of enhancing children's learning and engagement. Our randomized controlled study involving 77 four to six year old children suggested that incorporating contingent interaction within video programs helped children better understand the science concepts introduced in the video. Children who had contingent interaction also showed a higher level of vocalization and more positive affect during video watching and developed a more positive perception of the media character, though they spent less time looking at the screen. These findings shed light on the potential of contingent interaction with on-screen media characters enabled by artificial intelligence to promote learning and engagement.

Interacción contingente: un casode estudio en el aula de ISLen colombia

This study examines both contingent and non-contingent interaction (van Lier, L, 1996) as instantiated in an EFL classroom in Colombia. A teacher and her students were observed over a period of a term. The observations provided insights into how interaction took place in the EFL classroom. Drawing on the distinction between con-tingent and non-contingent interaction, the analysis indicated that interaction that occu-rred during instructional stages of the class was mostly non-contingent while interaction that occurred during the regulative stages (Bernstein, B, 2000; Christie, F, 2002) was more contingent and conducive to learning. Claims are made here for the benefits of contingent interaction for the development of competence in EFL. Some implications of this case study for language teacher educa-tion are also discussed.

MtDNA haplogroup A enhances the effect of obesity on the risk of knee OA in a Mexican population

To evaluate the influence of mitochondrial DNA haplogroups on the risk of knee OA in terms of their interaction with obesity, in a population from Mexico. Samples were obtained from (n = 353) knee OA patients (KL grade ≥ I) and (n = 364) healthy controls (KL grade = 0) from Mexico city and Torreon (Mexico). Both Caucasian and Amerindian mtDNA haplogroups were assigned by single base extension assay. A set of clinical and demographic variables, including obesity status, were considered to perform appropriate statistical approaches, including chi-square contingency tables, regression models and interaction analyses. To ensure the robustness of the predictive model, a statistical cross-validation strategy of B = 1000 iterations was used. All the analyses were performed using boot, GmAMisc and epiR package from R software v4.0.2 and SPSS software v24. The frequency distribution of the mtDNA haplogroups between OA patients and healthy controls for obese and non-obese groups showed the haplogroup A as significantly over-represented in knee OA patients within the obese group (OR 2.23; 95% CI 1.22–4.05; p-value = 0.008). The subsequent logistic regression analysis, including as covariate the interaction between obesity and mtDNA haplogroup A, supported the significant association of this interaction (OR 2.57; 95% CI 1.24–5.32; p-value = 0.011). The statistical cross-validation strategy confirmed the robustness of the regression model. The data presented here indicate a link between obesity in knee OA patients and mtDNA haplogroup A.

How to Benefit from Balancing External Knowledge Acquisition? A Chinese EIT Industry Case

This paper develops an integrated framework and examines how the implicit property-knowledge heterogeneity, acquisition costs and interactivity embedded in external knowledge acquisition (EKA) affect firms’ innovation performance. This is done by distinguishing three forms of EKA, including patent backward citations, patent collaboration and patent purchase. This research contributes to the existing EKA and open innovation literatures by studying whether EKA and internal R&D serve as substitutes or complements for firms’ innovation performance. Using a sample of 77 publicly listed firms in the electronic and information technology (EIT) industries of mainland China, with panel data collected from 2004 to 2016, this study has reached the following new findings: First, EKA both through patent backward citations and patent collaboration have significantly positive effects on firms’ innovation performance; the effect of patent purchase is not significant. Second, EKA through patent backward citations complements firms’ internal R&D, but EKA both through patent collaboration and patent purchase act as substitutes for internal R&D. Third, an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between the level of balance among the three different forms of EKA and firms’ innovation performance. Finally, contingent interaction effects exist between the level of balance among the three different forms of EKA and internal R&D on firms’ innovation performance. A complementary relationship exists with the internal R&D when firms have a high level of balance among three different forms of EKA. However, a substitution relationship exists with the internal R&D when firms have a low level of balance among the three different forms of EKA.

Integrating an early child development intervention into an existing primary healthcare platform in rural Lesotho: a prospective case–control study

ObjectivesThis study evaluated a novel early childhood development (ECD) programme integrated it into the primary healthcare system.SettingThe intervention was implemented in a rural district of Lesotho from 2017 to 2018.ParticipantsIt...

Parent Verbalizations and Toddler Responses With Touchscreen Tablet Nursery Rhyme Apps.

In some studies, parents and toddlers verbalize less when engaging with a tablet versus a print book. More needs to be known regarding child contributions to specific parent verbalizations. We examined parent-toddler contingent interactions with tablet applications versus print books, as well as moderators of these associations. We conducted a laboratory-based, within-subjects counterbalanced study of 72 parent-toddler dyads engaging with a nursery rhyme application (with enhanced + autonarration [E+A] and enhanced formats) and print book. We coded parent verbalizations (eg, dialogic, nondialogic) and proportions of child responses to these in 5-second epochs. Poisson regressions were used to analyze within-subjects variance by tablet or print format. We tested effect modification by child emotion regulation and home media practices. Children responded more to parent overall (print 0.38; E+A 0.31, P = .04; enhanced 0.11, P = .01), dialogic (print 0.21; E+A 0.13, P = .04; enhanced 0.1, P = .02), and nondialogic (print 0.45; E+A 0.27, P < .001; enhanced 0.32, P < .001) verbalizations during print book versus tablet. Stronger child emotion regulation, greater frequency of co-viewing, and instructive practices moderated associations such that differences between conditions were no longer significant for some parent verbalizations and child responses. Parent-toddler reciprocal verbal interactions occurred less frequently with tablet versus print book use. Child emotion regulation and parent home media practices moderated some of these associations. Pediatricians may wish to promote co-viewing and instructive media practices but may also consider that child emotion regulation may determine response to interactive tablet design.

The role of maternal interactive behavior and gestational age in predicting infant affect during the Still-Face Paradigm

Background: Emotion regulation develops through bidirectional affective communication. Aim: To investigate the role of maternal interactive behavior in predicting infant affect among preterm versus full-term infants. Study Design: The association between maternal interactive behavior (contingent, attention seeking, watching) and infant affect during a modified Still Face (SF) paradigm in a sample of 22 preterm and 28 full term infants (3 ½ - 4 ½ months old) was investigated. Methods: Maternal behavior and infant affect were coded in one second intervals. Results: Maternal contingent interaction was positively correlated with positive infant affect (p < 0.001 for Play; p < 0.001 for Reunion#1; p < 0.01 for Reunion#2, respectively), with a stronger association during the second reunion for preterm infants (p < 0.001). In the preterm sample but not in the full-term sample, attention seeking maternal interaction at Play (baseline), Reunion#1, and Reunion#2 were all positively correlated with negative infant affect at Still Face#2. Maternal watching was negatively associated with positive infant affect for the full sample for both Reunion episodes (p < 0.05). Full term infants' negative affect increased from baseline to the first SF episode and then plateaued, whereas preterm infants demonstrated greater negative affect and less recovery throughout. Mothers of full-term infants showed increased contingent responding after the first SF stressor, while mothers of preterm infants did not (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Preterm infants may be more susceptible to both positive and negative maternal behaviors and mothers of full-term infants may be more responsive to infants' increased distress. Relationship-focused interventions addressing maternal behaviors may enhance positive emotionality and improve self-regulation in medically at-risk infants.

The politics of labour relations in global production networks: Collective action, industrial parks, and local conflict in the Ethiopian apparel sector

In this paper we examine the emerging politics of labour agency as new manufacturing locations are incorporated into existing global production networks, using the example of the Ethiopian apparel industry. The Ethiopian state has employed an active space-based industrial policy to attract leading apparel manufacturers into a series of new industrial parks in the country. Both investors and the Ethiopian government expected to find a large and pliant labour force willing to work for low wages. However, the new sector has already seen a wave of collective and individual resistance from workers. We ask which factors contribute to drive and constrain labour agency and shape the specific forms it takes in firms tied into leading global production networks. Drawing on a large-N quantitative survey of factory workers and in-depth qualitative interviews with managers, workers, trade union representatives and government officials, we show how the quality of industrial relations depends not just on state action and the business strategies of lead firms in production networks, but also on variegated forms of labour agency used both by organised and unorganised Ethiopian workers. We find that many industrial conflicts result from the collision of the productivity imperatives of manufacturing firms tied into demanding, but low value-added, segments of global production networks with the expectations of workers with limited prior experience in industrial jobs, but are compounded by the contradictory actions of different state agencies, a lack of formal unionisation, and the contingent interactions of factory based grievances with local political conflicts. Industrial parks emerge as spaces of particular contestation. Our findings highlight the need to adopt an understanding of labour regimes grounded in local political realities. These findings have implications for the design of industrial policies and labour market institutions aiming to support firms and workers in emerging manufacturing clusters.

Exploring Kurdish Islamist Civil Society and Conflict in Turkey (2015–2018)

This article addresses the role and impact of religious civil society in situations of armed conflict through a case study of Kurdish Islamist civil society organisations and activists in Turkey. The focus is on the period following the collapse of the peace process and resurgence of violence in mid-2015 between Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkêrên Kurdistanê). Based on 40 in-depth interviews conducted in the city of Diyarbakir, I identify three main challenges to the effectiveness of religious civil society in peacebuilding processes: (1) relations with the state, (2) legacy and relationship with institutional violence, and (3) advocacy and representation of community needs. This article shows how ethnicity and Islam are shifting, contingent interactions in the construction of Kurdish identity, especially in response to violence. Although the public expression of pro-Kurdish rights claims altered under a securitisation rubric during this period, the demand for a peaceful settlement to the conflict transcends ideological and social differences across many Kurds.

Parent reports of children's parasocial relationships with conversational agents: Trusted voices in children's lives

With the rise of smart devices in the 21st century, children are increasingly engaged in socially contingent interactions with conversational agents such as Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. Using an online parent survey, young children's verbal interactions (parasocial interactions) and emotional relationships (parasocial relationships) with conversational agents were examined in a naturalistic study. A total of 92 parents responded to the survey, 70 of whom qualified because they had a conversational agent. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of emotional parasocial relationships with conversational agents in a subset of this sample (n = 58, mchild age = 5.54 years, age range 3–10, 33 females) revealed three dimensions: attachment, personification, and social realism. These dimensions are consistent with children's parasocial relationships with media characters. The relation between parasocial verbal interactions and emotional parasocial relationships with conversational agents was bidirectional. The results indicate that children develop close emotional ties with artificial beings, treating them as human-like entities with feelings and for whom they have feelings. Implications for interactions with artificial life as children's trusted social partners are considered.

Where language meets attention: How contingent interactions promote learning

Contingent interactions between caregivers and infants, in which caregivers respond promptly and meaningfully to infants’ behaviors, lay a foundation for language learning. Three pathways have been proposed for how contingent interactions promote the development of language skills: temporal, semantic, and pragmatic. Here, we argue that these pathways act through a reciprocal relation between infant attention and contingent interactions. We present evidence that attention facilitates contingent interactions to help infants understand communicative intent and, in turn, contingent interactions promote attention to allow infants to better learn from the language directed to them. This new framework suggests that contingent interactions operate through domain-general skills, thereby establishing a foundation for learning more broadly.

Do foetuses communicate? Foetal responses to interactive versus non-interactive maternal voice and touch: An exploratory analysis

The main aim of this study was to uncover any evidence for communicative engagement in foetuses. Taking into consideration the continuity of development pre- and postnatally, the social responsiveness of the newborn baby and the development of sensorimotor competence in the foetus, it is plausible to assume that communicative readiness develops before birth.During the interactive and noninteractive applications of three conditions: the mother’s voice, the touch of her abdomen and a control condition, foetuses’ (N = 12, 2–33 gestational weeks) behaviours were recorded through 4D scanning using Voluson S10 ultrasound and coded frame-by-frame.Foetuses displayed differential right-hand self-touch behaviours in response to the mother’s touch. There was a reduction of this movement when the mother was touching her abdomen, compared to when the mother was talking or during the baseline conditions. There was also a reduction in right-hand touch responses during the interactive touch condition but not during interactive talk condition. A similar result was found with regards to right-hand face touch responses. Foetuses displayed a longer duration of mouth opening in the interactive talk condition compared to the noninteractive talk condition. During the first 60 s, foetuses showed a significant increase in sucking behaviours during the interactive touch condition, compared to all other conditions. This is the first study to compare interactive versus noninteractive engagement of the foetus. The findings of this study suggest that foetuses in the third trimester discriminate between interactive and non-interactive external stimuli and respond to contingent interactions.