Interactive Text Research Articles

Contextualising screen violence: An integrative approach toward explaining of the functions of violent narrative events in audiovisual media

Abstract This article aims to examine the narrative impacts and social influences of screen violence in audiovisual media. It suggests an integrative approach to synthesising the recent research findings in different disciplines such as cognitive science, media studies, neuroscience, and social semiotic theories. Based on the theoretical synthesis of narrative effects and persuasive functions, this paper establishes a method for analysing the contextualisation of violent events. In particular, the analytical method focuses on the two main narrative mechanisms for contextualising violent events, justifications of characters’ motivations for using violence and depictions of consequences. This article will apply the method to elucidate how different kinds of contextualisation yield different types of narrative impacts, persuasive potentials, and the ways in which social, political, and ideological issues can be learnt. Furthermore, a typology of characters’ motivations is also provided, which are often used for justifying the characters’ violent actions in audiovisual narratives. This paper also unravels how genre expectations are closely related to narrative functions of screen violence, particularly how genre shapes the viewers’ prediction and interpretation of violent events. Finally, the methods for motivation analysis of violent narrative events are extended to examine a particular genre of interactive audiovisual texts — empathy games.

Get in the Game: Promoting Justice Through a Digitized Literature Study

This article describes a recent implementation of digital literacies in which high school literature students engaged in literary analysis of a novel using the video game Minecraft. Students who had previously expressed reluctance with reading and dissatisfaction with school experiences used their gaming skills to re-create scenes, respond to textual elements, and actualize authentic textual interactions. Inspired by the injustice of certain students being denied experiential learning in academic communities based on underperforming scores on standardized tests, this article challenges scripted, conventional curricula and suggests all students have the right to personalized relationships with literature. One student who had previously experienced feelings of failure in literacy settings expressed a newfound interest in texts when given the opportunity to enact literacy practices in academic spaces that mirrored his meaning-making in social spaces. This article promotes equity by arguing that engaging students with literature should involve an inclusive approach to curriculum and instruction. As educators we must offer high-interest readings while also providing numerous entry points into those readings for students who may not excel in homogenous environments. Social justice means celebrating students’ diverse literacy practices and leveraging those skills toward achievement, all the while empowering new voices and facilitating new discoveries.

Major Risks, Uncertain Outcomes: Making Ensemble Forecasts Work for Multiple Audiences

AbstractWhen extreme river levels are possible in a community, effective communication of weather and hydrologic forecasts is critical to protecting life and property. Residents, emergency personnel, and water resource managers need to make timely decisions about how and when to prepare. Uncertainty in forecasting is a critical component of this decision-making, but often poses a confounding factor for public and professional understanding of forecast products. A new suite of products from the National Weather Service’s Hydrologic Ensemble Forecast System (HEFS) provides short- and long-range forecasts, ranging from 6 h to 1 yr, and shows uncertainty in hydrologic forecasts. To understand how various audiences use and interpret ensemble forecasts showing a range of hydrologic forecast possibilities, a research project was conducted using scenario-based focus groups and surveys with community residents, emergency managers, and water resource managers in West Virginia and Maryland. The research assessed the utility of the HEFS products, identified barriers to proper understanding of the products, and suggested modifications to product design that could improve the understandability and accessibility for a range of users. There was a difference between the residential users’ reactions to the HEFS compared to the emergency managers and water resource managers, with the public reacting less favorably to all versions. The emergency managers preferred the revised HEFS products but had suggestions for additional changes, which were incorporated. Features such as interactive text boxes and forecaster’s notes further enhanced the utility and understandability of the products.

Speech communication integrated with other modalities

This brief paper is an editorial for the special issue on “Speech communication integrated with other modalities”. This special issue contains extended versions of selected topical papers from the 19th International Conference on Speech and Computer SPECOM-2017, organized on 12–16 September 2017 in Hatfield, UK. Five extended articles were selected for this special issue, all of which deal with speech-based human–computer communication jointly with visual, textual and/or other interaction modalities. The first three papers study various aspects of multimodal human–computer interaction, and in the remaining two papers, the authors study the video components of audio-visual speech recognition systems. In this editorial, we present an overview of the accepted articles and the selection process.

A Mobile Phone–Based Brief Intervention With Personalized Feedback and Text Messaging is Associated With Reductions in Driving After Drinking Among College Drinkers

Driving after drinking (DAD) among college students remains a significant public health concern and is perhaps the single riskiest drinking-related behavior. Counselor-delivered and web-based Brief Alcohol Interventions (BAIs) have been shown to reduce DAD among college students, but to date no study has evaluated the efficacy of a single-session mobile phone-based BAI specific to DAD. The present study examined whether a driving-specific BAI delivered via mobile phone would significantly decrease DAD among college students compared to an informational control. Participants were 84 college students (67.1% women; average age = 23; 52.4% White) who endorsed driving after drinking two or more drinks at least twice in the past 3 months. After completing baseline measures, participants were randomly assigned to receive either (a) DAD information or (b) DAD mobile BAI that included personalized feedback and interactive text messaging. Participants completed outcome measures at 3-month follow-up. Repeated-measures mixed modeling analyses revealed that students receiving the mobile phone-based BAI reported significantly greater reductions in likelihood of DAD (three or more drinks) and the number of drinks consumed before driving than students in the information condition at 3-month follow-up. These findings provide preliminary support for the short-term efficacy of a mobile phone-based BAI for reducing DAD among college students.

Interpretive Impacts of Text Visualization

Information visualizations are often evaluated as a tool in terms of their ability to support performance of a specific task. This article argues that value can be gained by instead evaluating visualizations from a communicative perspective. Specifically, it explores how text visualization can influence the impacts that framing has on the perception of political issues. Using data from a controlled laboratory study, the results presented here demonstrate that exposure to a text visualization can mitigate framing effects. Furthermore, it also shows a transfer effect, where participants who saw the visualization remained uninfluenced by framing in subsequent texts, even when the visualization was absent. These results carry implications for the methods used to evaluate information visualization systems, for understanding the cognitive and interpretive mechanisms by which framing effects occur, and for exploring the design space of interactive text visualization.

Sherlock

There exists an ever-growing set of data-centric systems that allow data scientists of varying skill levels to interactively manipulate, analyze and explore large structured data sets. However, there are currently not many systems that allow data scientists and novice users to interactively explore large unstructured text document collections from heterogeneous sources. In this demo paper, we present a new system for interactive text summarization called Sherlock. The task of automatically producing textual summaries is an important step to understand a collection of multiple topic-related documents. It has many real-world applications in journalism, medicine, and many more. However, none of the existing summarization systems allow users to provide feedback at interactive speed. We therefore integrate a new approximate summarization model into Sherlock that can guarantee interactive speeds even for large text collections to keep the user engaged in the process.

Theory-Based Text-Messaging to Reduce Methamphetamine Use and HIV Sexual Risk Behaviors Among Men Who Have Sex with Men: Automated Unidirectional Delivery Outperforms Bidirectional Peer Interactive Delivery.

Project Tech Support2 was a randomized controlled trial that tested three methods of text message delivery for reducing methamphetamine use and HIV risks among MSM. From March 2014 to January 2016, 286 methamphetamine-using MSM were randomized into: (1) interactive text conversations with Peer Health Educators, plus five-times-a-day automated theory-based messages, plus a weekly self-monitoring text-message assessment (TXT-PHE; n = 94); or, (2) the daily automated messages and weekly self-monitoring assessment (TXT-Auto; n = 99); or, (3) weekly self-monitoring assessment only (AO; n = 93). All three conditions demonstrated reductions in methamphetamine use (coef. = -0.10), sex on methamphetamine (coef. = -0.09), and condomless anal intercourse (CAI) with casual male partners (coef. = -0.06). Only participants in TXT-PHE and TEXT-Auto also reduced CAI with main male partners (coefTXT-PHE = -0.19; coef.TXT-Auto = -0.16), and only TEXT-Auto participants reduced CAI with anonymous male partners (coef. = -0.05). Additionally, both theory-based text-messaging interventions achieved sustained reductions in five of the six outcomes through 9months. Overall, automated delivery outperformed peer-delivered messaging.

ESL writers' academic writing process: Interrelationship between writing quality and writing process

This study examines a small group of novice ESL writers’ academic writing processes. It particularly focuses on three writing assignments they wrote during their first academic year of an ESL education program in a US university. Taking on a socio-cognitive perspective, the study investigates the development of the students’ writing processes. Daily audio-recorded activities, journal entries, and interviews were collected as the main data. These were triangulated with textual materials, such as outlines, drafts, and electronic communications. Data analysis was conducted through qualitative procedures to examine the narratives of the students’ writing processes. The study shows two distinct approaches to academic writing that may reflect high-quality writing. These include extensive and recursive drafting, and access to a range of textual interaction. The study also affirms that interacting with peers about assignments and interacting with texts, which provides rhetorical and linguistic information, may be significant factors in becoming successful writers.

Identification of key genes in human airway epithelial cells in response to respiratory pathogens using microarray analysis

BackgroundAirway epithelium is the primary target for pathogens. It functions not only as a mechanical barrier, but also as an important sentinel of the innate immune system. However, the interactions and processes between host airway epithelium and pathogens are not fully understood.ResultsIn this study, we identified responses of the human airway epithelium cells to respiratory pathogen infection. We retrieved three mRNA expression microarray datasets from the Gene Expression Omnibus database, and identified 116 differentially expressed genes common to all three datasets. Gene functional annotations were performed using Gene Ontology and pathway analyses. Using protein-protein interaction network analysis and text mining, we identified a subset of genes functioned as a group and associated with infection, inflammation, tissue adhesion, and receptor internalization in infected epithelial cells. These genes were further identified in BESE-2B cells in response to Talaromyces marneffei by Real-Time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR). In addition, we performed an in silico prediction of microRNA-target interactions and examined our findings.ConclusionsUsing bioinformatics analysis, we identified several genes that may serve as biomarkers for the diagnosis or the surveillance of early respiratory tract infection, and identified additional genes and miRNAs that warrant further fundamental experimental research.

‘Byron’s Voices: Cultural and Textual Interactions’ A Byron International Symposium University of Thessaloniki 11 November 2017

‘Byron’s Voices: Cultural and Textual Interactions’ A Byron International Symposium University of Thessaloniki 11 November 2017

Text message intervention to reduce frequency of binge drinking among disadvantaged men: the TRAM RCT

BackgroundSocially disadvantaged men are more likely to binge drink frequently and to experience high levels of alcohol-related harm.ObjectivesTo test the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a text message intervention in reducing the frequency of binge drinking among disadvantaged men.Study designA four-centre, parallel-group, pragmatic, individually randomised controlled trial was conducted. Randomisation was carried out using a secure remote web-based system. It was stratified by participating centre and recruitment method and restricted using block sizes of randomly varying lengths.SettingThe study was conducted in the community. Members of the public helped to develop the study methods.ParticipantsParticipants were men aged 25–44 years who had ≥ 2 episodes of binge drinking (> 8 units of alcohol in a single session) in the preceding 28 days. Men were recruited from areas of high deprivation.InterventionsAn empirically and theoretically based text message intervention was delivered by 112 interactive text messages over a 12-week period. The control group received an attentional control comprising 89 text messages on general health.Primary outcome measureThe primary outcome measure was the proportion of men consuming > 8 units of alcohol on ≥ 3 occasions (in the previous 28 days) at 12 months post intervention.ResultsThe recruitment target of 798 was exceeded and 825 men were randomised. Retention was high and similar in the intervention (84.9%) and control (86.5%) groups. Most men in the intervention group engaged enthusiastically with the text messages: almost all (92%) replied to text messages and over two-thirds (67%) replied more than 10 times. The intervention was estimated to have had a modest, statistically non-significant effect on the primary outcome at the 12-month follow-up [odds ratio 0.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.57 to 1.08]. This corresponds to a net reduction of 5.7% in regular binge drinking. Five secondary outcomes showed small non-significant and inconsistent effects on alcohol consumption, with one suggesting a positive effect and four suggesting an adverse effect. Both the short- and the long-term cost per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) analysis suggested that the brief intervention was dominated by a ‘do-nothing’ option. The intervention’s impacts on patterns of alcohol consumption, QALYs and downstream costs were inconsistent and uncertain.LimitationsThe study used an active control that, combined with the recruitment procedures and baseline assessments, could have biased the treatment effect towards the null. The measurement of alcohol consumption relied on self-reported drinking.ConclusionsThe trial has demonstrated that it is possible to recruit and retain large numbers of socially disadvantaged men in a research study. The text messages delivered a complex theoretically and empirically based intervention that fostered enthusiastic engagement with the key components of the behaviour change sequence. The intervention produced a modest, statistically non-significant effect on the primary outcome, with wide CIs. Further research is needed to reduce uncertainty about the treatment effect. The methods developed for this study provide a platform for the design and testing of interventions to reduce inequalities in health.Future workA future trial could reduce the uncertainty around the treatment effect of the intervention.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN07695192.FundingThis study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Public Health Research programme and will be published in full inPublic Health Research; Vol. 6, No. 6. See NIHR Journals Library website for further information.

Text Mining for Pest and Disease Identification on Rice Farming with Interactive Text Messaging

To overcome pests and diseases of rice farming, farmers always rely on information and knowledge from agricultural experts for decision making. The problem is that experts are not always available when the farmers need and the cost is quite high. Pests and diseases elimination is hard to be done individually since the farmers are lack of knowledge about the pest types that attack the rice fields. The objective of this study is to build a knowledge-based system that can identify pests and diseases interactively based on the information that has been told by the farmers using SMS communication services. The system can provide a convenience way to the farmers in delivering pests and disease problem information using a natural language. The text mining method performs tokenizing, filtering and porter stemming that used to extract important information sent by a SMS service. The method of Jaccard Similarity Coefficient (JSC) was used to calculate similarities of each pest and disease based on symptoms that are sent by the farmers through SMS. The corpus database usedin this study consists of 28.526 root words, 1.309 stop wordsand 180 words list. Pest and disease database reference in this study was obtained from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisher (MAF) Timor-Leste. The result of the experiment shows that the system is able to identify the symptoms based on the keywords identified with the accuracy of 81%. The result of pest and disease identification has the accuracy of 86%.

Texting to Reduce Alcohol Misuse (TRAM): main findings from a randomized controlled trial of a text message intervention to reduce binge drinking among disadvantaged men.

To test the effectiveness of a theoretically based text-message intervention to reduce binge drinking among socially disadvantaged men. A multi-centre parallel group, pragmatic, individually randomized controlled trial. Community-based study conducted in four regions of Scotland. A total of 825 men aged 25-44years recruited from socially disadvantaged areas who had two or more episodes of binge drinking (>8 UK units on a single occasion) in the preceding 28days: 411 men were randomized to the intervention and 414 to the control. A series of 112 interactive text messages was delivered by mobile phone during a 12-week period. The intervention was structured around the Health Action Process Approach, a comprehensive model which allows integration of a range of evidence-based behaviour change techniques. The control group received 89 texts on general health, with no mention of alcohol or use of behaviour change techniques. The primary outcome measure was the proportion of men consuming >8units on three or more occasions (in the previous 28days) at 12months post-intervention. The proportion of men consuming >8units on three or more occasions (in the previous 28days) was 41.5% in the intervention group and 47.8% in the control group. Formal analysis showed that there was no evidence that the intervention was effective [odds ratio (OR)=0.79, 95% confidence interval (CI)=0.57-1.08; absolute reduction 5.7%, 95% CI=-13.3 to 1.9]. The Bayes factor for this outcome was 1.3, confirming that the results were inconclusive. The retention was high and similar in intervention (84.9%) and control (86.5%) groups. Most men in the intervention group engaged with the text messages: almost all (92%) replied to text messages and 67% replied more than 10 times. A theoretically based text-messaging intervention aimed at reducing binge drinking in disadvantaged men was not found to reduce prevalence of binge drinking at 12-month follow-up.

Mobile Phone Intervention to Reduce Youth Suicide in Rural Communities: Field Test.

BackgroundSuicide is a leading cause of death among 10- to 19-year-olds in the United States, with 5% to 8% attempting suicide each year. Suicide risk rises significantly during early adolescence and is higher in rural and underserved communities. School-based universal prevention programs offer a promising way of reducing suicide by providing strategies for emotion regulation and encouraging help-seeking behaviors and youth-adult connectedness. However, such programs frequently run into difficulties in trying to engage a broad range of students. Text messaging is a dominant medium of communication among youths, and studies show both efficacy and uptake in text messaging interventions aimed at adolescents. Text-based interventions may, thus, offer a means for school-based universal prevention programs to engage adolescents who would otherwise be difficult to reach.ObjectiveWe field tested Text4Strength, an automated, interactive text messaging intervention that seeks to reach a broad range of early adolescents in rural communities. Text4Strength extends Sources of Strength, a peer-led school suicide prevention program, by encouraging emotion regulation, help-seeking behaviors, and youth-adult connectedness in adolescents. The study tested the appeal and feasibility of Text4Strength and its potential to extend universal school-based suicide prevention.MethodsWe field tested Text4Strength with 42 ninth-grade students. Over 9 weeks, students received 28 interactive message sequences across 9 categories (Sources of Strength introduction, positive friend, mentors, family support, healthy activities, generosity, spirituality, medical access, and emotion regulation strategies). The message sequences included games, requests for advice, questions about students’ own experiences, and peer testimonial videos. We measured baseline mental health characteristics, frequency of replies, completion of sequences and video viewing, appeal to students, and their perception of having benefited from the program.ResultsOf the 42 participating students, 38 (91%) responded to at least one sequence and 22 (52%) responded to more than a third of the sequences. The proportion of students who completed multistep sequences they had started ranged from 35% (6/17) to 100% (3/3 to 28/28), with responses dropping off when more than 4 replies were needed. With the exception of spirituality and generosity, each of the content areas generated at least a moderate number of student replies from both boys and girls. Students with higher and lower levels of risk and distress interacted with the sequences at similar rates. Contrary to expectations, few students watched videos. Students viewed the intervention as useful—even those who rarely responded to messages. More than 70% found the texts useful (3 items, n range 29-34) and 90% (36) agreed the program should be repeated.ConclusionsText4Strength offers a potentially engaging way to extend school-based interventions that promote protective factors for suicide. Text4Strength is ready to be revised, based on findings and student feedback from this field test, and rigorously tested for efficacy.

COMMON FACETS OF MUSEUM VIRTUAL SELF-PRESENTATION: EXPERIMENTING WITH INTERACTIVE IMAGE AND TEXT

In the modern world, all the museums, especially science and technology centers, seek transforming from storages of valuable historical objects to the knowledge exchange and construction places. This study aims to research official sites and social media channels of twenty European science and technology museums in order to understand how the virtual museum self-presentation is done. Using thematic analysis five common facets of the science and technology museum official site were coded: i) site interoperability; ii) home page; iii) first ten news; iv) science and education activities; v) information “about us”. All the data were anonymized. The study showed two contradicted science and technology museum virtual self-presentation behavior styles: orientation “Museum as a storage” and orientation “Visitor as a creator”. Researching how science and technology museums experimented with interactive image and text in their official web pages, museum social media site follower responses and museum ratings in social media, we expanded The Museum Visitor Experience Model with insights how the virtual self-presentation could help attracting museum visitors.

Copyright and Hypernarrative

A substantial body of scholarship has accumulated demonstrating that copyright's current structure entails legacy assumptions regarding authorship and originality. It has become commonplace to acknowledge that copyright doctrine incorporates notions of a “romantic author” who produces original texts from the force of his or her own genius. Equally routine is the recognition that such constructs foster a poor fit with communication technologies that reveal the role of the reader in creating textual meaning. Copyright law has kept pace neither with the development of new media nor with our changed understanding of authorship. This article starts a new thread in this conversation, questioning whether copyright's legacy assumptions also incorporate classical expectations regarding narrative. As new forms of expression have evolved, so have theories of narrative. Computer games and other interactive texts have generated new theories regarding the interaction between reader, content, and technical system. Using recent copyright decisions as a window into the underlying structure of the law, this article argues that copyright entails a view of narrative that has not kept pace with our understanding of the text. The gap between copyright's embedded assumptions and narrative theory exposes both where copyright has been and where it should be going.

SPECIFIC FEATURES OF SPORT EVENTS REPRESENTATION IN DISCOURSE: BASED ON THE MATERIAL OF ENGLISH FICTIONAL TEXTS

The article deals with the study of specific features of sport events representation in English fictional discourse on the material of the novel «Saturday» by a British writer Ian McEwan. The article combines both a review of the theory on the question of cognitive models and specific features of fiction and sports discourse, and analysis of the text. Within the framework of this particular research models of the author’s sport events representation are analysed with a view to distinguishing their specific discursive dominants. The author of the article considers that such discursive dominants as psychological state of participants, their perception of a site and circumstances of an event are specific to the author’s sport events representation in English fictional discourse. As s result of the conducted research it was discovered that intensification of certain types of discursive dominants is determined by the pragmatic purpose of the author of the text; in this particular case the intention of the author of the fiction text is an effort to exert influence on the reader by portraying the inward life and surroundings of characters and their mutual relations in a detailed and vivid way. The article also considers such feature of the kind of texts under analysis as introspection; in the course of the whole description of the sport event the main character asks himself numerous fundamental questions about his existence. Within the framework of the conducted research the phenomenon of interdiscursivity was studied; in this case it is regarded as a specific feature of dialogic textual interaction between texts belonging to fiction and sports discourse. The result of this interaction is the usage by the author of this fictional text of significant number of lexemes denoting various things relating to squash – a traditional British ball game. The article also deals with the specific linguistic means used by the author with the purpose of influencing the reader.

Implicit negative link detection on online political networks via matrix tri-factorizations

ABSTRACTPolitical conversations have become a ubiquitous part of social media. When users interact and engage in discussions, there are usually two mediums available to them; textual conversations and platform-specific interactions such as like, share (Facebook) or retweet (Twitter). Major social media platforms do not facilitate users with negative interaction options. However, many political network analysis tasks rely on not only positive but also negative linkages. Thus, detecting implicit negative links is an important and a challenging task. In this work, we propose an unsupervised framework utilising positive interactions, sentiment cues, and socially balanced triads for detecting implicit negative links. We also present an online variant of it for streaming data tasks. We show the effectiveness of both frameworks with experiments on two annotated datasets of politician Twitter accounts. Our experiments show that the proposed frameworks outperform other well-known and proposed baselines. To illustrate the detected implicit negative links' contribution, we compare the community detection accuracies using unsigned and signed networks. Experimental results using detected negative links show superiority on the three datasets where the camps are known a priori. We also present qualitative evaluations of polarisation patterns between communities which are only possible in the presence of negative links.

S50. EMPLOYING TEXT-MESSAGES TO IMPROVE MOTIVATION: MOBILE ENHANCEMENT OF MOTIVATION IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

BackgroundMotivation deficits are among the strongest determinants of reduced functioning and quality of life in people with schizophrenia. Mobile interventions are a promising approach to improving these deficits because they can provide frequent cues and reinforcements to support goal-directed behavior in daily life. The objective of this study is to assess the initial feasibility/acceptability and effectiveness of Mobile Enhancement of Motivation in Schizophrenia (MEMS), a personalized mobile text message intervention, compared to a goal-setting alone intervention.MethodsFifty-six participants with a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder have been enrolled in this ongoing controlled pilot study. Twenty-seven participants have been randomized to MEMS, while 29 participants have been randomized to the goal-setting alone condition. Participants in both groups set individualized recovery goals to complete over an 8-week period. Those in the MEMS group also receive three sets of personalized, interactive text messages each weekday to reinforce and cue goal completion. Blinded assessments are conducted before and after the 8-week period and include validated measures of motivation, quality of life, and functioning. Goal attainment and self-reported satisfaction with MEMS are also assessed.ResultsTo date, 36 participants (n = 18 in each group) have completed both baseline and follow-up assessments. Initial results suggest that relative to the goal-setting alone group, the MEMS group demonstrated significantly greater improvements in clinician-rated motivation (F(1, 33) = 7.14, p = .01; between-group d = .89). Specifically, the MEMS group demonstrated significantly higher clinician-rated motivation after 8 weeks (within-group d = .62), while clinician-rated motivation remained the same in the goal-setting alone group (within-group d = -.02). Across both groups, participants also significantly improved on clinician-rated functioning over time (t(35) = -2.56, p = .02, d = .43), but there was no difference between the two groups (F(1, 33) = .01, p = .94; between-group d = .03). No improvement on self-reported quality of life was observed in either group or across the full sample. The MEMS group reported strong satisfaction with the text-messages. Recruitment has been completed, and analyses from the full sample will be ready to present at the meeting.DiscussionInitial results indicate that MEMS is acceptable and may successfully improve motivation in people with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. However, additional analyses with the full sample are needed to more rigorously test the feasibility and effectiveness of MEMS.