Matching Items (4)
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- All Subjects: Multimedia
- Creators: McNamara, Danielle
- Creators: Rikakis, Thanassis
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Description
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that produces a characteristic set of neuromotor deficits that sometimes includes reduced amplitude and velocity of movement. Several studies have shown that people with PD improved their motor performance when presented with external cues. Other work has demonstrated that high velocity and large amplitude exercises can increase the amplitude and velocity of movement in simple carryover tasks in the upper and lower extremities. Although the cause for these effects is not known, improvements due to cueing suggest that part of the neuromotor deficit in PD is in the integration of sensory feedback to produce motor commands. Previous studies have documented some somatosensory deficits, but only limited information is available regarding the nature and magnitude of sensorimotor deficits in the shoulder of people with PD. The goals of this research were to characterize the sensorimotor impairment in the shoulder joint of people with PD and to investigate the use of visual feedback and large amplitude/high velocity exercises to target PD-related motor deficits. Two systems were designed and developed to use visual feedback to assess the ability of participants to accurately adjust limb placement or limb movement velocity and to encourage improvements in performance of these tasks. Each system was tested on participants with PD, age-matched control subjects and young control subjects to characterize and compare limb placement and velocity control capabilities. Results demonstrated that participants with PD were less accurate at placing their limbs than age-matched or young control subjects, but that their performance improved over the course of the test session such that by the end, the participants with PD performed as well as controls. For the limb velocity feedback task, participants with PD and age-matched control subjects were less accurate than young control subjects, but at the end of the session, participants with PD and age-matched control subjects were as accurate as the young control subjects. This study demonstrates that people with PD were able to improve their movement patterns based on visual feedback of performance and suggests that this feedback paradigm may be useful in exercise programs for people with PD.
ContributorsSmith, Catherine (Author) / Abbas, James J (Thesis advisor) / Ingalls, Todd (Thesis advisor) / Krishnamurthi, Narayanan (Committee member) / Buneo, Christopher (Committee member) / Rikakis, Thanassis (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
As the application of interactive media systems expands to address broader problems in health, education and creative practice, they fall within a higher dimensional space for which it is inherently more complex to design. In response to this need an emerging area of interactive system design, referred to as experiential media systems, applies hybrid knowledge synthesized across multiple disciplines to address challenges relevant to daily experience. Interactive neurorehabilitation (INR) aims to enhance functional movement therapy by integrating detailed motion capture with interactive feedback in a manner that facilitates engagement and sensorimotor learning for those who have suffered neurologic injury. While INR shows great promise to advance the current state of therapies, a cohesive media design methodology for INR is missing due to the present lack of substantial evidence within the field. Using an experiential media based approach to draw knowledge from external disciplines, this dissertation proposes a compositional framework for authoring visual media for INR systems across contexts and applications within upper extremity stroke rehabilitation. The compositional framework is applied across systems for supervised training, unsupervised training, and assisted reflection, which reflect the collective work of the Adaptive Mixed Reality Rehabilitation (AMRR) Team at Arizona State University, of which the author is a member. Formal structures and a methodology for applying them are described in detail for the visual media environments designed by the author. Data collected from studies conducted by the AMRR team to evaluate these systems in both supervised and unsupervised training contexts is also discussed in terms of the extent to which the application of the compositional framework is supported and which aspects require further investigation. The potential broader implications of the proposed compositional framework and methodology are the dissemination of interdisciplinary information to accelerate the informed development of INR applications and to demonstrate the potential benefit of generalizing integrative approaches, merging arts and science based knowledge, for other complex problems related to embodied learning.
ContributorsLehrer, Nicole (Author) / Rikakis, Thanassis (Committee member) / Olson, Loren (Committee member) / Wolf, Steven L. (Committee member) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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
Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are important predictors of performance in educational settings. Thus, understanding the processes underlying the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence is important. Three large scale individual differences experiments were conducted to determine the mechanisms underlying the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. Experiments 1 and 2 were designed to assess whether individual differences in strategic behavior contribute to the variance shared between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. In Experiment 3, competing theories for describing the underlying processes (cognitive vs. strategy) were evaluated in a comprehensive examination of potential underlying mechanisms. These data help inform existing theories about the mechanisms underlying the relation between WMC and gF. However, these data also indicate that the current theoretical model of the shared variance between WMC and gF would need to be revised to account for the data in Experiment 3. Possible sources of misfit are considered in the discussion along with a consideration of the theoretical implications of observing those relations in the Experiment 3 data.
ContributorsWingert, Kimberly Marie (Author) / Brewer, Gene A. (Thesis advisor) / McNamara, Danielle (Thesis advisor) / McClure, Samuel (Committee member) / Redick, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018