Matching Items (9)
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- All Subjects: Counseling psychology
- All Subjects: Multimedia
- Creators: Atkinson, Robert
Description
Believe It! is an animated interactive computer program that delivers cognitive restructuring to adolescent females' irrational career beliefs. It challenges the irrational belief and offers more reasonable alternatives. The current study investigated the potentially differential effects of Asian versus Caucasian animated agents in delivering the treatment to young Chinese American women. The results suggested that the Asian animated agent was not significantly superior to the Caucasian animated agent. Nor was there a significant interaction between level of acculturation and the effects of the animated agents. Ways to modify the Believe It! program for Chinese American users were recommended.
ContributorsZhang, Xue (Author) / Horan, John J (Thesis advisor) / Homer, Judith (Committee member) / Atkinson, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The Believe It! program developed and evaluated by Kovalski & Horan (1999) was the first interactive, multimedia, psychological-education intervention deployed on the Internet. In a controlled study, the authors reported that the ethnically diverse cartoon models were partially successful in using cognitive restructuring to promote more reasonable career beliefs among Caucasian middle-school young women. It was not clear if the program's lack of efficacy among minority young women was due to computer literacy factors affected by SES. Subsequently, three studies explored the role of matching or mismatching the ethnicity of animated agents in a graphically enhanced program with that of the young women receiving the cognitive restructuring treatment. Each of the studies used the same four outcome measures (Occupational Sex-Role Questionnaire, Believe It Measure, Career Beliefs Inventory, and the Career Myths Scale) before and after matched and mismatched participants received the Believe It! intervention. Webster (2010) analyzed data from African-American participants, Hardy (2011) Latinas, and Zhang (2013) Asian-Americans. The current study examined the matching hypothesis on a sample of ethnically isolated Caucasian young women in a rural setting. The results obtained in the three previous studies are consistent with similar research involving client and counselor dyads (e.g., Cabral & Smith, 2011). The Believe It! program had a clear impact on ethnically matched African-American young women, whereas pairings on ethnicity did not improve outcomes for either Latinas or Asian-Americans. A solitary effect on the Occupation Sex-Role Questionnaire in the current study suggests the hypothesis is worthy of further study.
ContributorsHacker, Robyn (Author) / Horan, John J (Thesis advisor) / Atkinson, Robert (Committee member) / Homer, Judith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The current study is a follow up to a previous evaluation of Believe It!, an internet-based career development program for adolescent girls. This study attempted to extend the program's effectiveness by manipulating animated agent appearance based on literature suggesting that agent appearance has implications for human-computer program interface. Participants included 52 Latinas (ages 11 to 14) randomly assigned to view one of two versions of the revised career program. Each version contained identical content but included animated agents designed to represent different ethnicities. Pre and post-treatment scores for three career belief measures and an occupational stereotype measure were analyzed using a MANCOVA. The results were not significant and further analyses revealed that the results were confounded by complications with the perceived ethnicity of the animated agents. Despite a lack of significance the results provide enriching information about Latina adolescent perception of ethnicity.
ContributorsHardy, Amanda (Author) / Horan, John (Thesis advisor) / Atkinson, Robert (Committee member) / Homer, Judith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Smartphones have become increasingly common over the past few years, and mobile games continue to be the most common type of application (Apple, Inc., 2013). For many people, the social aspect of gaming is very important, and thus most mobile games include support for playing with multiple players. However, there is a lack of common knowledge about which implementation of this functionality is most favorable from a development standpoint. In this study, we evaluate three different types of multiplayer gameplay (pass-and-play, Bluetooth, and GameCenter) via development cost and user interviews. We find that pass-and-play, the most easily-implemented mode, is not favored by players due to its inconvenience. We also find that GameCenter is not as well favored as expected due to latency of GameCenter's servers, and that Bluetooth multiplayer is the most well favored for social play due to its similarity to real-life play. Despite there being a large overhead in developing and testing Bluetooth and GameCenter multiplayer due to Apple's development process, this is irrelevant since professional developers must enroll in this process anyway. Therefore, the most effective multiplayer mode to develop is mostly determined by whether Internet play is desirable: Bluetooth if not, GameCenter if so. Future studies involving more complete development work and more types of multiplayer modes could yield more promising results.
ContributorsBradley, Michael Robert (Author) / Collofello, James (Thesis director) / Wilkerson, Kelly (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
As one of the first attempts to research multimedia platforms for older adults when learning an online photo-editing software, this study examined whether an audio only, a text only, or a combination of an audio and text tutorial would be the most effective teaching method. Elderly adults aged 65 and older (N-45) were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions. They first went through a training phase that utilized their assigned condition to teach five tasks within the photo-editing program, and they were then tested on how well they learned these tasks as well as a transfer task. It was predicted that the multimedia condition would increase learning efficiency, produce more successes in the transfer task, and decrease cognitive load compared to the two unimodal conditions. The multimedia condition (text and audio) had no significant effect on transfer task successes or decreases in cognitive load compared to the unimodal conditions (text only and audio only). The multimedia condition, however, did produce significantly less errors on Tasks 2, 4, and 5 than the unimodal conditions. This suggests that redundancy principles may play an important role when designing learning platforms for elderly users, and that age needs to be considered as an additional factor during the technological design process.
ContributorsSwieczkowski, Hannah Elizabeth (Author) / Atkinson, Robert (Thesis director) / Chavez, Helen (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Smartphone privacy is a growing concern around the world; smartphone applications routinely take personal information from our phones and monetize it for their own profit. Worse, they're doing it legally. The Terms of Service allow companies to use this information to market, promote, and sell personal data. Most users seem to be either unaware of it, or unconcerned by it. This has negative implications for the future of privacy, particularly as the idea of smart home technology becomes a reality. If this is what privacy looks like now, with only one major type of smart device on the market, what will the future hold, when the smart home systems come into play. In order to examine this question, I investigated how much awareness/knowledge smartphone users of a specific demographic (millennials aged 18-25) knew about their smartphone's data and where it goes. I wanted three questions answered: - For what purposes do millennials use their smartphones? - What do they know about smartphone privacy and security? - How will this affect the future of privacy? To accomplish this, I gathered information using a distributed survey to millennials attending Arizona State University. Using statistical analysis, I exposed trends for this demographic, discovering that there isn't a lack of knowledge among millennials; most are aware that smartphone apps can collect and share data and many of the participants are not comfortable with the current state of smartphone privacy. However, more than half of the study participants indicated that they never read an app's Terms of Service. Due to the nature of the privacy vs. convenience argument, users will willingly agree to let apps take their personal in- formation, since they don't want to give up the convenience.
ContributorsJones, Scott Spenser (Author) / Atkinson, Robert (Thesis director) / Chavez-Echeagaray, Maria Elena (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The gameplay experience can be understood as an interaction between player and game design characteristics. A greater understanding of these characteristics can be gained through empirical means. Subsequently, an enhanced knowledge of these characteristics should enable the creation of games that effectively generate desirable experiences for players. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between gameplay enjoyment and the individual characteristics of gaming goal orientations, game usage, and gender. A total of 301 participants were surveyed and the data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). This led to an expanded Gameplay Enjoyment Model (GEM) with 41 game features, an overarching Enjoyment factor, and 9 specific components, including Challenge, Companionship, Discovery, Fantasy, Fidelity, Identity, Multiplayer, Recognition, and Strategy. Furthermore, the 3x2 educational goal orientation framework was successfully applied to a gaming context. The resulting 3x2 Gaming Goal Orientations (GGO) model consists of 18 statements that describe players' motivations for gaming, which are distributed across the six dimensions of Task-Approach, Task-Avoidance, Self-Approach, Self-Avoidance, Other-Approach, and Other-Avoidance. Lastly, players' individual characteristics were used to predict gameplay enjoyment, which resulted in the formation of the GEM-Individual Characteristics (GEM-IC) model. In GEM-IC, the six GGO dimensions were the strongest predictors. Meanwhile, game usage variables like multiplayer, genre, and platform preference, were minimal to moderate predictors. Although commonly appearing in games research, gender and game time commitment variables failed to predict enjoyment. The results of this study enable important work to be conducted involving game experiences and player characteristics. After several empirical iterations, GEM is considered suitable to employ as a research and design tool. In addition, GGO should be useful to researchers interested in how player motivations relate to gameplay experiences. Moreover, GEM-IC points to several variables that may prove useful in future research. Accordingly, it is posited that researchers will derive more meaningful insights on games and players by investigating detailed, context-specific characteristics as compared to general, demographic ones. Ultimately, it is believed that GEM, GGO, and GEM-IC will be useful tools for researchers and designers who seek to create effective gameplay experiences that meet the needs of players.
ContributorsQuick, John (Author) / Atkinson, Robert (Thesis advisor) / McNamara, Danielle (Committee member) / Nelson, Brian (Committee member) / Savenye, Wilhelmina (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Although women of color have increased their presence in the workplace, many obstacles restricting career opportunities still exist. It is important that mental health professionals contribute in providing interventions to increase career opportunities for women of color. The purpose of this research is to add to the repertoire of interventions by studying the irrational career beliefs of Black women. This research utilizes the Believe It! program, an online career development program that focuses on altering irrational/maladaptive career beliefs that can prevent young females from pursuing career opportunities. An early study of Believe It! found it to be effective for Caucasian females, however the effects for minority females were less clear. The current study re-examined the effectiveness of Believe It! for minorities by altering the appearance of the animated character within the program. It was hypothesized that young African American women interacting with African American animated agents would display greater rationality in terms of career beliefs compared to young African American women interacting with Caucasian animated agents. Forty-four African American girls between the ages of eleven to fifteen were pre-tested with a battery of assessment devices addressing the irrationality of the girls' career beliefs. The measures included the Career Myths Scale, the Career Beliefs Inventory, the Occupational Sex-role Questionnaire, and the Believe It! measure. Four to eight days later, participants engaged in the online Believe It! Program; they were randomly assigned to either a matched condition (viewing the program with an African American animated agent) or a mismatched condition (viewing the program with a Caucasian animated agent). After completion of the intervention, participants were post-tested with the same assessment battery. MANCOVA and ANCOVA analyses showed that participants in the matched condition consistently benefitted from the matched intervention. Implications for this research are discussed.
ContributorsWebster, Jacqueline (Author) / Horan, John J (Thesis advisor) / Atkinson, Robert (Committee member) / Homer, Judith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate the effects of textual and visual annotations on Spanish listening comprehension and vocabulary acquisition in the context of an online multimedia listening activity. 95 students who were enrolled in different sections of first year Spanish classes at a community college and a large southwestern university were randomly assigned to one of four versions of an online multimedia listening activity that contained textual and visual annotations of several key words. Students then took a comprehension and vocabulary posttest and a survey to measure cognitive load and general attitudes towards the program. Results indicated that textual annotations had a significant positive effect on listening comprehension and that visual annotations had a significant positive effect on how successful students felt. No statistically significant differences were found for other variables. Participants also reported positive attitudes towards vocabulary annotations and expressed a desire to see more annotations during multimedia listening activities of this type. These findings provide further evidence of the impact that multimedia may have on language acquisition. These findings have implications for multimedia design and for future research. Language listening activities should include a variety of vocabulary annotations that may help students to understand what they hear and to help them learn new vocabulary. Further research is needed outside of the laboratory, in the online and increasingly-mobile language learning environment in order to align the research with the environment in which many students currently study. The incorporation of motivation into multimedia learning theory and cognitive load should be explored, as well as new measures of cognitive load.
ContributorsCottam, Michael Evan (Author) / Savenye, Wilhelmina (Thesis advisor) / Klein, James D. (Committee member) / Atkinson, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010