Multisensory Approach Research Articles

Multisensory experience for mental health in higher education classroom design

The World Health Organization has incorporated mental health in September 2015 as one of the goals of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially those focusing on ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages. One of the things that affect mental health is a sensory stimulus that is inherent in the human body that rise to the perception of the environment. The problem that often occurs is the architectural and built environment design dominates by the visual sensory, whereas it should, the perception of space is received through full spectrum of perceptual quality. This multisensory approach conducted with sensewalking – open questioner and semantic differential scales – to assess the perception of the classroom. The online data that been collected will be analyzed to determine the perceptual construct from each category of sensory and look for components that designers should be concerned with in classroom design.

Analytic Study on Application of Multisensory Approach in Art Subject for Students with Visual Impairments

Analytic Study on Application of Multisensory Approach in Art Subject for Students with Visual Impairments

Effects of Traditional Lecture Method and Multi-Sensory Approach on ELT Learners at Graduate Level

The current study investigates the traditional verbal lecture method and the multi-sensory approach toward ELT at degree level. It was an investigative method having four groups, two controlled groups and two experimental groups who attempted pre-test and post-test. The controlled groups were taught with traditional lecture method and the experimental groups were taught to multisensory approach. Sample of 200 was selected form two universities randomly VAK Learning Styles Self-Assessment Questionnaire by Chislett and Chapman 2005 was used to know the dominant learning style of the learners. Descriptive statistics were used to find out the ratio of different styles of learner and correlation was find out to know the significant improvement of learning between the pre-test and post-test of all four groups. Some practical recommendations were suggested to make ELT teaching learning process more efficient.

Implications of Multi-sensory Approach for Child L2 Vocabulary Acquisitio

Teaching a foreign language to young learners requires of the teacher a special ability to involve them in a variety of activities explicitly accommodating their need for whole-person enjoyment and implicitly fostering their L2 knowledge. This complex pedagogic task is likely to be achieved with reliance on the multi-sensory approach which is recommended by the European Co-operation Programs as an alternative L2 teaching trend encompassing universal, proactive qualities and educational diversity. Consequently, the following paper highlights the multisensoiy approach as the driving force of the lexically oriented syllabus designed by the author for young children learning English as a foreign language. The said syllabus design is presented through the empirical filter of knowledge claims and value judgements about its efficiency.

Intervention for ADHD Child using the Montessori Method and ICTs.

<p class="0abstract"><span lang="EN-US">This article intends to address intervention strategies for children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD), with references to aspects of the Montessori Method, combined to ICTs. Furthermore, new technologies, based on the Montessori philosophy (such as robotics) address behavioral as well as multisensory approach to ADHD using the senses of vision, hear and touch. In addition, these interventions can also contribute to regulate the child’s social-emotional adjustment and learning engagement. Multiple intervention strategies implemented within home and school environment can be effective for students with ADHD.</span></p>

Auditory information for spatial location and pitch–height correspondence support young infants’ perception of object persistence

Perception of object persistence across occlusion emerges at around 4 months of age for objects moving horizontally or vertically. In addition, congruent auditory information for movement enhances perception of persistence of an object moving horizontally. In two experiments, we examined the effect of presenting bimodal (visual and auditory) sensory information, both congruently and incongruently, for a vertical moving object occlusion event. A total of 68 4-month-old infants (34 girls) were tested for perception of persistence of an object moving up and down, passing at each translation behind a centrally placed occluder. Infants were exposed to these visual events accompanied by no sound, spatially colocated sound, or congruent or incongruent pitch–height correspondence sounds. Both spatially colocated and congruent pitch–height auditory information enhanced perception of trajectory continuity. However, no impairment occurred when pitch–height sound information was presented incongruently. These results highlight the importance of taking a multisensory approach to infant perceptual development.

Improving the Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge of Prospective Teachers through Multisensory Approach: Experience from Indonesia

Abstract. In mathematics, there is conceptual and procedural knowledge. Conceptual knowledge is about ideas or mathematics understanding but procedural knowledge is about procedure to solve mathematics problems. Multisensory approach involve many senses like kinaesthetic, visual and auditory to gain knowledge. This research aims to find information about how to apply multisensory approach to improve conceptual and procedural knowledge of prospective teacher in Jakarta State University. This action research study used Kemmis and Taggart model and implemented in two cycles. The data were collected through questionnaires and observation sheets. Then, the data was analyzed descriptively. The research results showed that the multisensory approach can enhance the conceptual and procedural knowledge of the prospective teachers. The Kinaesthetic approach was implemented in hands-on activity using concrete materials while the visual using images. The concrete materials and image provide different presentation but it helped to constructed concepts and abstraction. Furthermore, the auditory approach was developed along learning activities trough discussion to produce and clarify the ideas. Keywords: Conceptual knowledge, Procedural knowledge, Multisensory approach

A Multi-Sensory Approach to Cultural Heritage: The Battle of Pavia Exhibition

In the last years, several museums and exhibits have adopted new kinds of interactive installations that present artworks in more attractive ways, especially for young visitors. At the same time, new communication technologies have been introduced to allow vision and motion impaired people to visit arts centers. In this work, we present the multi-sensory solutions we have implemented for the “Battle of Pavia” Exhibition, a collateral event of Milan Expo 2015. The installation combined different interaction methods to achieve two main goals: providing visitors with engaging experiences and allowing blind and partially sighted people to appreciate the exposed artworks. The used technologies include gesture communication, gaze-based interaction, 3D character reconstruction, virtual avatars, and 3D tactile images. This work can be also viewed in the context of digital humanities for cultural heritage. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first exhibit to gather such a high number of interactive technologies in a single installation. The positive response from visitors is a great spur to continue our research in this direction.

A Multisensory Approach for Remote Health Monitoring of Older People

Growing life expectancy and increasing incidence of multiple chronic health conditions are significant societal challenges. Different technologies have been proposed to address these issues, detect critical events, such as stroke or falls, and monitor automatically human activities for health condition inference and anomaly detection. This paper aims to investigate two types of sensing technologies proposed for assisted living: wearable and radar sensors. First, different feature selection methods are validated and compared in terms of accuracy and computational loads. Then, information fusion is applied to enhance activity classification accuracy combining the two sensors. Improvements in classification accuracy of approximately 12% using feature level fusion are achieved with both support vector machine s (SVMs) and k -nearest neighbor (KNN) classifiers. Decision-level fusion schemes are also investigated, yielding classification accuracy in the order of 97%–98%.

Identifying the connection between Roman conceptions of ‘Pure Air’ and physical and mental health in Pompeian gardens (c.150 BC–AD 79): a multi-sensory approach to ancient medicine

ABSTRACT Different genres of Roman literature commented on the relationship between the condition of the environment and health. They often refer to clear, pure or good air as a beneficial aspect of the environment. Yet, unlike fetid air, they provide few descriptions of what constituted healthy air quality. Aside from the association between the environment and bodily condition, they also did not explain how the link between the two was made. This paper utilizes a comparative study of ancient literature and the archaeological remains of Roman gardens in Pompeii: archaeobotanical samples; fresco paintings; location; and surviving features. The following questions are addressed in this study. How did the Romans identify and define pure air? How did air connect to the body? What were the qualities of pure air and how did they benefit the body? Inhalation and sensory perception were both ways air was linked to the body. The author argues that sight, sound and olfaction were used to identify the qualities of pure air. Through this process, the beneficial properties of pure air were, in accordance to ancient perceptions of sensory function, taken into the body and affected health. Thus, sensory perception was the bridge between the environment and health.

Learning from bathhouses

Sloterdijk’s view of the world as a “grand interior” responds to the progressive interiorization of the environment “where both culture, and even nature, have increasingly become indoor affairs.”1 A junior design studio offered at the University of Texas at Austin (Fall 2016 and 2017) sought to examine interior space as an autonomous microcosm, both in meteorological and atmospheric terms. Students were asked to design an interior space for collective bathing. The bathhouse, as a design exercise, responds to the increasingly autonomous nature of the interior at a material, climatic, cultural, and social level. Bathhouses can be understood as manufactured microcosms, in other words, man-made environments that establish an analogous and dialectic relationship between its internal microsphere and the external natural world. In the context of a design studio, students were encouraged to design how both tangible and intangible conditions concurrently contribute to the perception of space. Modulating meteorological variables, light, temperature, and humidity were key compositional tools within the studio. Material surface treatments and meteorological conditions were designed in conjunction to enrich one another in the production of an enhanced atmosphere. A multisensory design approach sought to expand the student’s understanding of the body’s physiological engagement with space. The most intimate contact between the body and architecture takes place at the bath space. The body, as generator of interior space, in its physiological and cultural complexity, was at the heart of this design exercise.

Additive and interactive effects of spatial attention and expectation on perceptual decisions

Spatial attention and expectation are two critical top-down mechanisms controlling perceptual inference. Based on previous research it remains unclear whether their influence on perceptual decisions is additive or interactive. We developed a novel multisensory approach that orthogonally manipulated spatial attention (i.e. task-relevance) and expectation (i.e. signal probability) selectively in audition and evaluated their effects on observers’ responses in vision. Critically, while experiment 1 manipulated expectation directly via the probability of task-relevant auditory targets across hemifields, experiment 2 manipulated it indirectly via task-irrelevant auditory non-targets. Surprisingly, our results demonstrate that spatial attention and signal probability influence perceptual decisions either additively or interactively. These seemingly contradictory results can be explained parsimoniously by a model that combines spatial attention, general and spatially selective response probabilities as predictors with no direct influence of signal probability. Our model provides a novel perspective on how spatial attention and expectation facilitate effective interactions with the environment.

Потенциометрическое определение метионина в щелочных растворах с помощью мембран Nafion и МФ-4СК, подвергшихся обработке и модификации

Разработаны массивы перекрестно чувствительных ПД-сенсоров (аналитический сигнал – потенциал Доннана) на основе мембран Nafion и МФ‑4СК, подвергшихся модификации и обработке, для определения анионов и цвиттерионов метионина совместно с катионами калия в щелочных растворах. Выявлено влияние кислотно-основных свойств и объемной доли наночастиц гидратированных оксидов ЭO2 (Э=Ce, Zr, Si), вводимых в мембраны разными методами, на перекрестную чувствительность ПД-сенсоров в исследуемых растворах. Выявлена зависимость чувствительности ПД-сенсоров к анионам и цвиттерионам метионина от диффузионной проницаемости мембран, подвергшихся обработке при различных температуре и относительной влажности. Выбраны образцы, обеспечивающие достаточно низкие значения относительной погрешности и относительного стандартного отклонения определения анионов и цвиттерионов метионина совместно с катионами калия в диапазоне концентраций от 1.0·10‑4 до 5.0·10‑2 М, не смотря на переменные значения рН растворов, изменяющиеся в широком диапазоне (от 8 до 11).

The architect as Ally: A multi-sensory approach to design

The end product of an architectural acoustic design is not the quality of the documentation or the successful achievement of a set of parameters, but rather the experience of the end users. With rare exception, the perception of acoustic characteristics cannot be separated from the users’ visual and tactile experiences. To unify these sensory experiences, we have adopted an approach to acoustic design that fully embraces the architect’s spatial and material vision for a building. At the same time, we seek to educate the architect so that they can embrace and internalize the acoustic goals of the building in their work. This presentation will describe our overall design approach, means of communication and demonstration used to build conviviality with our clients, and examples where acoustic and architectural goals have coincided.

Desembaralhando: a mobile application for intervention in the problem of dyslexic children mirror writing

ABSTRACT Purpose: to present a new application for mobile devices, referred to as Desembaralhando, for intervention in the problem of dyslexic children mirror writring. Methods: the development of the application is the result of a set of clinical and speech therapy information and experiences, which points out frequency of letter mirroring as a challenging problem in children with dyslexia. The application, developed in the light of the multisensory approach, was created by a multidisciplinary team of computer scientists, a game designer and a speech therapist, in order to meet users requirements, such as appropriate fonts and colors. Results: the activities stimulate phonological awareness skills from the association between images and words, audio aids, as well as an original function that is the rotational movement of letters b/d and a/e, which facilitates the perception of the visual layout of the letters. Conclusions: guidelines such as the choice of typography and interface colors appropriate to dyslexic children are used to favor intervention, in order to minimize the difficulties of these children regarding letters mirroring.

Action Observation Plus Sonification. A Novel Therapeutic Protocol for Parkinson's Patient with Freezing of Gait.

Freezing of gait (FoG) is a disabling symptom associated with falls, with little or no responsiveness to pharmacological treatment. Current protocols used for rehabilitation are based on the use of external sensory cues. However, cued strategies might generate an important dependence on the environment. Teaching motor strategies without cues [i.e., action observation (AO) plus Sonification] could represent an alternative/innovative approach to rehabilitation that matters most on appropriate allocation of attention and lightening cognitive load. We aimed to test the effects of a novel experimental protocol to treat patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and FoG, using functional, and clinical scales. The experimental protocol was based on AO plus Sonification. 12 patients were treated with 8 motor gestures. They watched eight videos showing an actor performing the same eight gestures, and then tried to repeat each gesture. Each video was composed by images and sounds of the gestures. By means of the Sonification technique, the sounds of gestures were obtained by transforming kinematic data (velocity) recorded during gesture execution, into pitch variations. The same 8 motor gestures were also used in a second group of 10 patients; which were treated with a standard protocol based on a common sensory stimulation method. All patients were tested with functional and clinical scales before, after, at 1 month, and 3 months after the treatment. Data showed that the experimental protocol have positive effects on functional and clinical tests. In comparison with the baseline evaluations, significant performance improvements were seen in the NFOG questionnaire, and the UPDRS (parts II and III). Importantly, all these improvements were consistently observed at the end, 1 month, and 3 months after treatment. No improvement effects were found in the group of patients treated with the standard protocol. These data suggest that a multisensory approach based on AO plus Sonification, with the two stimuli semantically related, could help PD patients with FoG to relearn gait movements, to reduce freezing episodes, and that these effects could be prolonged over time.

LexiPal: Kinect-based application for dyslexia using multisensory approach and natural user interface

Considered as an effective learning strategy for dyslexia, multisensory approach demands visual, auditory, and kinesthetic activity. While development of software application implementing multisensory approach has shown promising result, previous applications did not accurately resemble multisensory strategy because there are no kinesthetic implementations. This research proposes a Kinect-based application, termed LexiPal, which incorporates kinesthetic activity in multisensory implementation by using Natural User Interface (NUI). NUI provides more intuitive ways of interacting with the application by using body movement and gesture. LexiPal implements NUI by fusing several technologies including Augmented/Mixed Reality (AR/MR), non-contact human-computer interaction, skeletal tracking, hand tracking, and gesture recognition. For evaluation purpose, LexiPal was tested on 40 dyslexic children and they considered LexiPal user interaction as easy to use and enjoyable, which attract them to play the learning content again in the near future.

Clay’s the Thing: Clay Work for Mastering Spelling

A number of students experience difficulty with the spelling, retention, and recognition of basic spelling words. These students, who are often Dyslexic and/or Three Dimensional Visual Thinkers (3DVT), are usually taught spelling through mainstream pedagogic practices such as phonics and rote learning; practices which are generally unsuccessful with this group. Symbol Mastery is a process where students work with clay to create visual interpretations of a word’s meaning and then they connect it to the word’s spelling and pronunciation, resulting in a multisensory approach to learning to spell. Davis developed Symbol Mastery based on his belief that creativity is an important component of learning. This study aimed to trial Symbol Mastery in order to add to the body of evidence of its impact on Dyslexic students’ spelling abilities. The research was framed as a qualitative case study, with its participants being four Dyslexic students who had completed an individualized program and eight one-on-one tutorial sessions. Data was gathered from pre- and post-program interviews with students and parents, researcher observations, and artifact collection. Along with this, pre- and post-tutorial spelling tests were administered. The results showed that through engaging with the word visually and creatively, spelling was retained and student participants were more engaged in the learning process.

Deconstructing Rattan: Morphology of Biogenic Silica in Rattan and Its Impact on Preservation of Southeast Asian Art and Artifacts Made of Rattan

ABSTRACTRattan, a climbing palm of the tropical region of Southeast Asia (SEA), supplied material for objects of myriad purposes including ceremonial, religious, utilitarian, and artistic as exemplified by the collections at the National Museum of Singapore, Asian Civilization Museum, and the Singapore Art Museum. The aim of this analysis of rattan is to further the understanding of rattan, in particular its surface, and to propose a protocol-enabling positive identification of rattan in artifacts, thus guiding conservation decisions. The rattan surface defines an artifacts esthetic appearance and stability, and understanding its characteristics is essential to the development of an informed preservation strategy. Rattan epidermis morphology, topography, and cellular structure were characterized by a multi-scale and a multi-sensory approach using optical microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The chemical composition was analyzed with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and macro-X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (m-XRF) and indicated the presence of a siliceous compound, biogenic silica, in the epidermis and phytoliths in vascular tissue. A parallel analytical protocol was applied to samples extracted from museum artifacts (nineteenth-twentieth century) and contemporary objects acquired during field studies in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Cambodia. The methods of processing rattan have a direct impact on the siliceous layer thus leading to a better understanding of surface patterns found on artifacts. An attempt to find correlations between the percentage of silica and thickness of the siliceous layer did not produce conclusive results; both varied greatly in all studied examples. Darkening of rattan was clearly associated with aging but did not indicate any distinct effect on the chemical composition of the outer layer. The chemical analysis of the biogenic silica layer combined with recording methods of processing rattan observed during field studies in SEA provide a basis for a better understanding of rattan collections in the museum context.

Toward Intuitive Prosthetic Control: Solving Common Issues Using Force Myography, Surface Electromyography, and Pattern Recognition in a Pilot Case Study

Despite the appearance of advanced multi-degrees of freedom (DoF) robotic hands during the past decade, prosthetic control lacks a powerful interface to facilitate all its functionalities in a manner that is acceptable for a majority of users [1]. In this article, we explore the feasibility of using a sensing technique called force myography (FMG) as an alternative or synergist to the traditional surface electromyography (sEMG) technique as a human-machine interface (HMI) for the control of a multi-DoF prosthetic hand, bebionic 3 by Ottobock, Austin, Texas. In this article, we present a prosthetic prototype developed for the Cybathlon 2016, a championship for racing pilots with disabilities using assistive robotic devices. The design of the prototype is discussed and the effect of two factors on its control is analyzed. These factors are 1) the impact of a multisensory approach and 2) the placement of FMG sensor strips within the prosthetic inner socket. Analysis is performed by comparing resulting pattern recognition accuracies. Results show that the use of both sensing modalities (FMG and EMG) together produced the highest pattern recognition accuracy (81.1%) for ten classes of motion (four wrist movements and six grip patterns). We demonstrated that FMG has the potential to be an HMI for control of upper-limb-powered prostheses. FMG also illustrates the potential for intuitive control through the use of pattern recognition. A multisensory approach could assist in increasing robustness of the HMI for prosthetic control.