There is evidence to suggest that the use of visual schedules within music therapy practice is beneficial; however, there is a paucity of supporting literature for using these tools in programs for ...families with complex needs. This study investigates the application of the existing Music Therapy Visual Schedule Approach (MT-ViSA) to this focus population group.
Participants considered to be families with complex needs were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy to attend a 6-week music therapy program. Data collection was informed by a hybrid mixed methods design with observation, survey and interview methods being used. A bricolage research approach forms the theoretical framework for the analysis, demonstrating the joint juxtapositioning of qualitative and quantitative data.
Eight parent-child dyads participated in the study with a 100% attendance rate achieved. The use of the MT-ViSA assisted participants with the routine and structure of the sessions, supporting attendance and engagement. When investigating how the visual flip-book schedule primed the children for music-making, four themes emerged: understanding, anticipating, self-regulating and exercising agency. A single embedded case example is included to further illustrate these themes.
This paper has implications for music therapy practice. The work highlights the beneficial role of the MT-ViSA for families with complex needs and suggests that this approach may potentially benefit different population groups. The theoretical model is presented and discussed, along with project limitations including the small sample size and data collection tools. In conclusion, future research plans and training are shared.
Structured clinical history question inventories have previously been used to try and elicit symptoms of perceptual visual dysfunction (PVD) in children with cerebral palsy (CP) in different ...settings. Earlier studies have suggested that PVD may affect quality of life and specific habilitational strategies, linked to inventory responses, may improve quality of life. Through an RCT, based on a community based sample of children with CP in Cross River State, Nigeria, we aimed to determine if a structured history inventory such as the Insight question inventory (IQI) and associated tailored visual support strategies (IQI VSS) for the management of those children who have PVD, can improve quality of life and is superior to standard therapy. Children with CP were recruited by the key informant method and confirmed by clinical examination. The parent reported IQI was used to identify children with PVD. Primary outcome measures were both Pediatric Quality of Life 4.0 Generic (PedsQL 4.0 Generic) and Pediatric Quality of Life 3.0 Cerebral Palsy (PedsQL 3.0 CP) scale scores. Children were enrolled with a parallel arm allocation to either IQI and IQI VSS or to standard therapy for CP. Children were followed up for 6 weeks with weekly phone call session and the questionnaires repeated at the end of the 6 weeks’ period. Results show that the children in the treatment group (
n
= 191) showed no significantly different change between baseline and follow up in quality of life (PedsQL 4.0 Generic
p
= 0.943: and PedsQL-CP 3.0
p
= 0.287), compared to the control group. There was suggestion of a better improvement (
p
= 0.035) in the PedsQL 3.0 CP subscale of speech and communication for the intervention group. The use of IQI VSS for the treatment of PVD in children with CP in this population does not show any superiority over current standard CP management in terms of overall quality of life. However, there was some evidence of improvement in quality of life in the area of speech and communication. Further research and refinement of these management method is required.
Clinical Trial Registration:
www.ClinicalTrials.gov
, identifier PACTR20161200188 6396.
Sensory-motor perturbations have been widely used to assess astronauts' balance in standing during pre-/post- spaceflight. However, balance control during walking, where most falls occur, was less ...studied in these astronauts. A study found that applying either visual or platform oscillations reduced the margin of stability (MOS) in the anterior-posterior direction (MOSap) but increased MOS in the medial-lateral direction (MOSml) as a tradeoff. This tradeoff induced an asymmetric gait. This study extended the current knowledge to investigate overall stability under unpredictable environments. This study aimed to determine (1) whether quasi-random treadmill perturbations with or without full vision support would result in a significant reduction in MOSap but an increase in MOSml and (2) regardless of whether vision support was provided, quasi-random treadmill perturbations might result in asymmetric gait patterns.
Twenty healthy young adults participated in this study. Three experimental conditions were semi-randomly assigned to these participants as follows: (1) the control condition (Norm), walking normally with their preferred walking speed on the treadmill; (2) the treadmill perturbations with full vision condition (Slip), walking on the quasi-random varying-treadmill-belt-speeds with full vision support; and (3) the treadmill perturbations without full vision condition (Slip_VisionBlocked, blackout vision through customized vision-blocked goggles), walking on the quasi-random varying-treadmill-belt-speeds without full vision support. The dependent variables were MOSap, MOSml, and respective symmetric indices. A one-way repeated ANOVA measure or Friedman Test was applied to investigate the differences among the conditions mentioned above.
There was an increase in MOSap in Slip (
= 0.001) but a decrease in MOSap in Slip_VisionBlocked (
= 0.001) compared to Norm condition. The MOSml was significantly greater in both Slip and Slip_VisionBlocked conditions compared to the Norm condition (
= 0.011;
< 0.001). An analysis of Wilcoxon signed-rank tests revealed that the symmetric index of MOSml in Slip_VisionBlocked (
= 0.002) was greater than in the Norm condition.
The novelty of this study was to investigate the effect of vision on the overall stability of walking under quasi-random treadmill perturbations. The results revealed that overall stability and symmetry were controlled differently with/without full visual support. In light of these findings, it is imperative to take visual support into consideration while developing a sensory-motor training protocol. Asymmetric gait also required extra attention while walking on the quasi-random treadmill perturbations without full vision support to maintain overall stability.
Easy-to-read guidelines recommend visual support and lexical simplification to facilitate text processing, but few empirical studies confirm a positive effect from these recommendations in ...individuals with dyslexia. This study examined the influence of the visual support and lexical simplification on sentence processing through eye movements at both the text- and word-level, and the differences between readers with and without dyslexia. Furthermore, we explored the influence of reading experience and vocabulary, as control variables. We tested 20 young adults with dyslexia and 20 chronological age-matched controls. Participants read 60 sentences in total. Half the sentences contained an image and the other half did not, and half contained a low-frequency word and half a high-frequency word. Results showed that visual support and lexical simplification facilitated sentence processing, potentially by jointly facilitating lexical semantic access. We also found that participants with lower print exposure and lower vocabulary benefited more from word-level lexical simplification. We conclude that both adaptations could benefit readers with low print exposure and smaller vocabularies, and therefore, to many dyslexic readers who show these characteristics.
A prediction model is used to predict subjective responses of crane operators with respect to different designs of In-Vehicle Visual Support (IVVS). Selected gaze metrics are used as objective ...metrics to minimize prejudice, which is commonly caused by subjective measures. Experiments are carried out using crane simulator to measure glance behavior of novice operators and the 3D perspective projection method is used for autonomous mapping of gaze fixations to dynamic Area-of-Interests (AOIs). Subjective responses, such as operators' emotion and usability of IVVS, are evaluated using the Likert scale of the Semantic Differential method. Correlation between gaze metrics and subjective responses is established using multiple linear regression. Glance behavior exhibits a statistically significant difference when information on IVVS is perceived as useful to ease operation and reduce tension. Despite this, there are no significant signs of distraction. Glance behavior is found to be a reliable sub-conscious indicator of subjective response and distraction. More importantly, the proposed gaze metrics are found to be a good representation of glance behavior, such as randomness and distribution of attention. The methods and findings are useful to evaluate impact of IVVS, which is becoming more common in many other applications.
•Gaze behaviour is used to evaluate design of crane’s User Interface (UI).•Several gaze metrics are proposed to model gaze behaviour.•Feature selection method identified gaze metrics to evaluate design of UI.•Selected gaze metrics predicted subjective responses of users in terms of emotion and usability of UI.•3D perspective projection is used for autonomous mapping of gaze to dynamic AOIs.
Background: Research into workplace adjustments for people with disabilities is a fundamental challenge of supported employment. The aim of the present work is to investigate the effect of several ...graphic resources as natural support for workers with intellectual disability.
Methods: Two case studies were conducted to assess the performance of five workers engaged in office tasks, with three different support conditions.
Results: Results reveal a 20% increase in quality of performance of the tasks undertaken with graphic support as compared to support in which the participants received verbal instructions (VIs) from a work mate; and between 25 and 30% as compared to a control condition which included no help of any kind.
Conclusions: These findings are consistent with previous studies which support the possibility of generating, at low cost, iconic materials (with maps or simple graphics), which progressively facilitate workers' autonomy, without dependence or help from the job trainer. We observed that the worst performance is in the support condition with VIs, this shows the limitations of this type of natural support, which is provided on demand by work mates without specialist knowledge of work support.
Implications for Rehabilitation
We studied the use of various types of natural support for people with intellectual disability in their workplace.
The findings suggest that, with some brief training, the simple use in the workplace of graphic help on a card can increase between 20 and 30% the quality of performance of certain work tasks carried out by workers with intellectual disability.
This advantage contrasts with the high cost or lower "manageability" of other material resources of natural support based on the use of technology.
Remote control of vehicles is a difficult task for operators. Support systems that present additional task information may assist operators, but their usefulness is expected to depend on several ...factors such as 1) the nature of conveyed information, 2) what modality it is conveyed through, and 3) the task difficulty. In an exploratory experiment, these three factors were manipulated to quantify their effects on operator behavior. Subjects ( n = 15 ) used a haptic manipulator to steer a virtual nonholonomic vehicle through abstract environments, in which obstacles needed to be avoided. Both a simple support conveying near-future predictions of the trajectory of the vehicle and a more elaborate support that continuously suggests the path to be taken were designed (factor 1). These types of information were offered either with visual or haptic cues (factor 2). These four support systems were tested in four different abstracted environments with decreasing amount of allowed variability in realized trajectories (factor 3). The results show improvements for the simple support only when this information was presented visually, but not when offered haptically. For the elaborate support, equally large improvements for both modalities were found. This suggests that the elaborate support is better: additional information is key in improving performance in nonholonomic steering tasks.
We report a case of oral hygiene control with a toothbrushing calender as a visual support tool. A 8 year-old boy patient visited our department with chief conplaint of toothache in left lower molar. ...There were a lot of decayed tooth in his mouth. He had autism spectrum disorder. We performed a comprehensive treatment under general anesthesia. After treatment under general anesthesia, the patient brushed his tooth after every meal, 3 times a day according to toothbrushing calender. In addition, dentures was weared as a space maintainer. It is important the need for cooperation consultation room and home and school to keep oral hygiene.
Pronunciation is a fundamental factor in speaking and listening. However, instructions for important articulation have not been sufficiently provided in conventional computer-assisted language ...learning (CALL) systems. One typical case is the articulation of rounded vowels. Although lip protrusion is essential for their correct pronunciation, the perception of lip protrusion is often difficult for beginners. To tackle this issue, we propose an innovative method that will provide a comprehensive visual explanation for articulation. Lip movements are three-dimensionally measured, and face images or videos are pseudocoloured on the basis of the movements. The coloured regions represent the lip protrusion of rounded vowels. To verify the learning effect of the proposed method, we conducted experiments with Japanese undergraduates in Chinese classes. The results showed that our method has advantages over conventional video materials.
Language barriers hamper or delay delivery of urgent and emergency care to migrant children when they or their parents don't speak any of the languages commonly spoken in Switzerland. In such ...situations, nurses often fall back to use ad hoc communication aids, including translation apps and visual dictionaries, to collect information about a patient's medical history. In this paper, we report on the participatory design process for a novel image-based communication aid. It is specifically tailored to the needs of migrant patients and nurses within Swiss pediatric clinics. We collected requirements in surveys and in-depth interviews with pediatric nurses. A prototype app was developed and tested with users in a scenario-based usability test. The results clearly show that the images developed, especially for symptoms, accidents or nutrition and excretion, are well comprehensible for triage and anamnesis. In contrast, a temporal classification or chronological occurrence of health incidents is difficulty to express with images.
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