2024
Antle, Alissa N., McLaren, Elgin-Skye
Are mobile neurofeedback games a feasible way to improve self-regulation of attention for young marginalized children? Journal Article
In: International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, vol. 42, pp. 100690, 2024.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: mindfull
@article{ANTLE2024100690,
title = {Are mobile neurofeedback games a feasible way to improve self-regulation of attention for young marginalized children?},
author = {Alissa N. Antle and Elgin-Skye McLaren},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221286892400059X},
doi = {doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2024.100690},
year = {2024},
date = {2024-09-13},
urldate = {2024-09-13},
journal = {International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction},
volume = {42},
pages = {100690},
abstract = {Interactive technology-mediated behavioral interventions are increasingly being studied with children at risk for attentional challenges. Few technology-mediated interventions have been designed for, or studied in the field with, marginalized children, who are at an elevated risk for attentional challenges. We adapted three existing neurofeedback games to create a proof-of-concept intervention to address this research gap. To investigate preliminary feasibility and efficacy we conducted a controlled field experiment with 28 children (aged 5 to 8, 22 male) from a disadvantaged community. Findings showed that with support all children were able to complete the intervention, and most were able to transfer newly attained attention regulation skills into everyday situations and maintain those skills over time. Our work serves as a proof-of-concept for this type of technology-mediated mental health intervention research, provides an exemplar of digital health research with hard-to-reach populations, and provides preliminary evidence that this research space warrants future attention.
},
keywords = {mindfull},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Interactive technology-mediated behavioral interventions are increasingly being studied with children at risk for attentional challenges. Few technology-mediated interventions have been designed for, or studied in the field with, marginalized children, who are at an elevated risk for attentional challenges. We adapted three existing neurofeedback games to create a proof-of-concept intervention to address this research gap. To investigate preliminary feasibility and efficacy we conducted a controlled field experiment with 28 children (aged 5 to 8, 22 male) from a disadvantaged community. Findings showed that with support all children were able to complete the intervention, and most were able to transfer newly attained attention regulation skills into everyday situations and maintain those skills over time. Our work serves as a proof-of-concept for this type of technology-mediated mental health intervention research, provides an exemplar of digital health research with hard-to-reach populations, and provides preliminary evidence that this research space warrants future attention.
2023
Slovak, Petr, Antle, Alissa, Theofanopoulou, Nikki, Roquet, Claudia Daudén, Gross, James, Isbister, Katherine
Designing for Emotion Regulation Interventions: An Agenda for HCI Theory and Research Journal Article
In: ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact., vol. 30, no. 1, 2023, ISSN: 1073-0516.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: emotion regulation, mental health, mindfull, Review, technology-enabled intervention
@article{10.1145/3569898,
title = {Designing for Emotion Regulation Interventions: An Agenda for HCI Theory and Research},
author = {Petr Slovak and Alissa Antle and Nikki Theofanopoulou and Claudia Daudén Roquet and James Gross and Katherine Isbister},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3569898},
doi = {10.1145/3569898},
issn = {1073-0516},
year = {2023},
date = {2023-03-01},
urldate = {2023-03-01},
journal = {ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact.},
volume = {30},
number = {1},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
abstract = {There is a growing interest in human-computer interaction (HCI) to envision, design, and evaluate technology-enabled interventions that support users’ emotion regulation. This interest stems in part from increased recognition that the ability to regulate emotions is critical to mental health, and that a lack of effective emotion regulation is a transdiagnostic factor for mental illness. However, the potential to combine innovative HCI designs with the theoretical grounding and state-of-the-art interventions from psychology has yet to be fully realised. In this article, we synthesise HCI work on emotion regulation interventions and propose a three-part framework to guide technology designers in making: (i) theory-informed decisions about intervention targets; (ii) strategic decisions regarding the technology-enabled intervention mechanisms to be included in the system; and (iii) practical decisions around previous implementations of the selected intervention components. We show how this framework can both systematise HCI work to date and suggest a research agenda for future work.},
keywords = {emotion regulation, mental health, mindfull, Review, technology-enabled intervention},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
There is a growing interest in human-computer interaction (HCI) to envision, design, and evaluate technology-enabled interventions that support users’ emotion regulation. This interest stems in part from increased recognition that the ability to regulate emotions is critical to mental health, and that a lack of effective emotion regulation is a transdiagnostic factor for mental illness. However, the potential to combine innovative HCI designs with the theoretical grounding and state-of-the-art interventions from psychology has yet to be fully realised. In this article, we synthesise HCI work on emotion regulation interventions and propose a three-part framework to guide technology designers in making: (i) theory-informed decisions about intervention targets; (ii) strategic decisions regarding the technology-enabled intervention mechanisms to be included in the system; and (iii) practical decisions around previous implementations of the selected intervention components. We show how this framework can both systematise HCI work to date and suggest a research agenda for future work.
2019
Antle, Alissa N., McLaren, Elgin-Skye, Fiedler, Holly, Johnson, Naomi
Evaluating the Impact of a Mobile Neurofeedback App for Young Children at School and Home Proceedings Article
In: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–13, Association for Computing Machinery, Glasgow, Scotland Uk, 2019, ISBN: 9781450359702.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: brain computer interfaces, children, field studies, hci for mental health, mindfull, positive computing, self-regulation
@inproceedings{10.1145/3290605.3300266,
title = {Evaluating the Impact of a Mobile Neurofeedback App for Young Children at School and Home},
author = {Alissa N. Antle and Elgin-Skye McLaren and Holly Fiedler and Naomi Johnson},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300266},
doi = {10.1145/3290605.3300266},
isbn = {9781450359702},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-01-01},
urldate = {2019-01-01},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
pages = {1–13},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {Glasgow, Scotland Uk},
series = {CHI '19},
abstract = {About 18% of children in industrialized countries suffer from anxiety. We designed a mobile neurofeedback app, called Mind-Full, based on existing design guidelines. Our goal was for young children in lower socio-economic status schools to improve their ability to self-regulate anxiety by using Mind-Full. In this paper we report on quantitative outcomes from a sixteen-week field evaluation with 20 young children (aged 5 to 8). Our methodological contribution includes using a control group, validated measures of anxiety and stress, and assessing transfer and maintenance. Results from teacher and parent behavioral surveys indicated gains in children's ability to self-regulate anxiety at school and home; a decrease in anxious behaviors at home; and cortisol tests showed variable improvement in physiological stress levels. We contribute to HCI for mental health with evidence that it is viable to use a mobile app in lower socio-economic status schools to improve children's mental health.},
keywords = {brain computer interfaces, children, field studies, hci for mental health, mindfull, positive computing, self-regulation},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
About 18% of children in industrialized countries suffer from anxiety. We designed a mobile neurofeedback app, called Mind-Full, based on existing design guidelines. Our goal was for young children in lower socio-economic status schools to improve their ability to self-regulate anxiety by using Mind-Full. In this paper we report on quantitative outcomes from a sixteen-week field evaluation with 20 young children (aged 5 to 8). Our methodological contribution includes using a control group, validated measures of anxiety and stress, and assessing transfer and maintenance. Results from teacher and parent behavioral surveys indicated gains in children's ability to self-regulate anxiety at school and home; a decrease in anxious behaviors at home; and cortisol tests showed variable improvement in physiological stress levels. We contribute to HCI for mental health with evidence that it is viable to use a mobile app in lower socio-economic status schools to improve children's mental health.
Antle, Alissa N., McLaren, Elgin Skye, Fiedler, Holly, Johnson, Naomi
Design for Mental Health: How Socio-Technological Processes Mediate Outcome Measures in a Field Study of a Wearable Anxiety App Proceedings Article
In: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, pp. 87–96, Association for Computing Machinery, Tempe, Arizona, USA, 2019, ISBN: 9781450361965.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: Brain-computer interfaces, children, emotion-regulation, learning, mental health., mindfull, socio-technological studies
@inproceedings{10.1145/3294109.3295650,
title = {Design for Mental Health: How Socio-Technological Processes Mediate Outcome Measures in a Field Study of a Wearable Anxiety App},
author = {Alissa N. Antle and Elgin Skye McLaren and Holly Fiedler and Naomi Johnson},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3294109.3295650},
doi = {10.1145/3294109.3295650},
isbn = {9781450361965},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-01-01},
urldate = {2019-01-01},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction},
pages = {87–96},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {Tempe, Arizona, USA},
series = {TEI '19},
abstract = {Millions of children have challenges with anxiety that negatively impact their development, education and well-being. To address this challenge, we developed version 2.0 of Mind-Full, a wearable, mobile neurofeedback system, designed to teach young children to learn to self-regulate anxiety. We present a mixed methods evaluation of a seven week long intervention in schools. We report on a subset of outcome measures related to 10 children's anxiety and stress in the classroom and describe mediating socio-technological processes that may have impacted outcomes. Findings showed improvement in children's ability to self-regulate anxiety and reduced cortisol levels for some children. Qualitative findings suggested that children who made multimodal connections during system mediated learning and had teacher support for learning transfer responded well to the intervention. We suggest that framing mental health app design as a distributed, adaptive, socio-technological system enables designers to better meet individual's unique and changing mental health needs.},
keywords = {Brain-computer interfaces, children, emotion-regulation, learning, mental health., mindfull, socio-technological studies},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Millions of children have challenges with anxiety that negatively impact their development, education and well-being. To address this challenge, we developed version 2.0 of Mind-Full, a wearable, mobile neurofeedback system, designed to teach young children to learn to self-regulate anxiety. We present a mixed methods evaluation of a seven week long intervention in schools. We report on a subset of outcome measures related to 10 children's anxiety and stress in the classroom and describe mediating socio-technological processes that may have impacted outcomes. Findings showed improvement in children's ability to self-regulate anxiety and reduced cortisol levels for some children. Qualitative findings suggested that children who made multimodal connections during system mediated learning and had teacher support for learning transfer responded well to the intervention. We suggest that framing mental health app design as a distributed, adaptive, socio-technological system enables designers to better meet individual's unique and changing mental health needs.
2018
A.N. Antle, Chesick, Cramer, E
East meets west: a mobile brain-computer system that helps children living in poverty learn to self-regulate. Journal Article
In: Personal and Ubiquitous Computing , vol. 22, pp. 839–866, 2018.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: mindfull
@article{nokey,
title = {East meets west: a mobile brain-computer system that helps children living in poverty learn to self-regulate.},
author = {Antle, A.N., Chesick, L., Sridharan, S.K. and Cramer, E},
url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00779-018-1166-x#article-info},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-018-1166-x},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-06-12},
urldate = {2018-06-12},
journal = {Personal and Ubiquitous Computing },
volume = {22},
pages = {839–866},
abstract = {Children living in poverty often suffer multiple forms of trauma, which impedes their ability to effectively self-regulate negative emotions, such as anxiety, and to focus their attention. As a result, many of these children struggle at school. Our work explores the effectiveness of using a mindfulness-oriented, neurofeedback-based, brain-computer system to help teach children living in poverty to self-regulate anxiety and attention. Our system, called Mind-Full, was specifically designed for illiterate girls who attend an NGO-funded school in Pokhara, Nepal. In this paper, we present the results of a waitlist control field experiment with 21 girls who completed an intervention using the Mind-Full system. Our results indicated that a 6-week Mind-Full intervention was viable and that children were able to transfer self-regulation skills learned using our system into real-world settings and continue to self-regulate successfully after 2 months. We present our findings as a validation of the effectiveness of mobile neurofeedback-based interventions to help young children living in poverty develop self-regulation skills. We conclude with a discussion of the results, methodological challenges of working in the developing world, and advice for future investigations of the effectiveness of neurofeedback applications for children.},
keywords = {mindfull},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Children living in poverty often suffer multiple forms of trauma, which impedes their ability to effectively self-regulate negative emotions, such as anxiety, and to focus their attention. As a result, many of these children struggle at school. Our work explores the effectiveness of using a mindfulness-oriented, neurofeedback-based, brain-computer system to help teach children living in poverty to self-regulate anxiety and attention. Our system, called Mind-Full, was specifically designed for illiterate girls who attend an NGO-funded school in Pokhara, Nepal. In this paper, we present the results of a waitlist control field experiment with 21 girls who completed an intervention using the Mind-Full system. Our results indicated that a 6-week Mind-Full intervention was viable and that children were able to transfer self-regulation skills learned using our system into real-world settings and continue to self-regulate successfully after 2 months. We present our findings as a validation of the effectiveness of mobile neurofeedback-based interventions to help young children living in poverty develop self-regulation skills. We conclude with a discussion of the results, methodological challenges of working in the developing world, and advice for future investigations of the effectiveness of neurofeedback applications for children.
Antle, Alissa N., Chesick, Leslie, Mclaren, Elgin-Skye
Opening up the Design Space of Neurofeedback Brain--Computer Interfaces for Children Journal Article
In: ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact., vol. 24, no. 6, 2018, ISSN: 1073-0516.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: Brain-computer interfaces, children, conceptual framework, design, mental health, mindfull, self-regulation, strong concepts
@article{10.1145/3131607,
title = {Opening up the Design Space of Neurofeedback Brain--Computer Interfaces for Children},
author = {Alissa N. Antle and Leslie Chesick and Elgin-Skye Mclaren},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3131607},
doi = {10.1145/3131607},
issn = {1073-0516},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-01-01},
urldate = {2018-01-01},
journal = {ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact.},
volume = {24},
number = {6},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
abstract = {Brain--computer interface applications (BCIs) utilizing neurofeedback (NF) can make invisible brain states visible in real time. Learning to recognize, modify, and regulate brain states is critical to all children's development and can improve learning, and emotional and mental health outcomes. How can we design usable and effective NF BCIs that help children learn and practice brain state self-regulation? Our contribution is a list of challenges for this emerging design space and a conceptual framework that addresses those challenges. The framework is composed of five interrelated strong concepts that we adapted from other design spaces. We derived the concepts reflectively, theoretically, and empirically through a design research process in which we created and evaluated a NF BCI, called Mind-Full, designed to help children living in Nepal who had suffered from complex trauma learn to self-regulate anxiety and attention. We add rigor to our derivation methodology by horizontally and vertically grounding our concepts, that is, relating them to similar concepts in the literature and instantiations in other artifacts. We illustrate the generative power of the concepts and the inter-relationships between them through the description of two new NF BCIs we created using the framework for urban and indigenous children with anxiety and attentional challenges. We then show the versatility of our framework by describing how it inspired and informed the conceptual design of three NF BCIs for different types of self-regulation: selective attention and working memory, pain management, and depression. Last, we discuss the contestability, defensibility, and substantiveness of our conceptual framework in order to ensure rigor in our research design process. Our contribution is a rigorously derived design framework that opens up this new and emerging design space of NF BCI's for children for other researchers and designers.},
keywords = {Brain-computer interfaces, children, conceptual framework, design, mental health, mindfull, self-regulation, strong concepts},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Brain--computer interface applications (BCIs) utilizing neurofeedback (NF) can make invisible brain states visible in real time. Learning to recognize, modify, and regulate brain states is critical to all children's development and can improve learning, and emotional and mental health outcomes. How can we design usable and effective NF BCIs that help children learn and practice brain state self-regulation? Our contribution is a list of challenges for this emerging design space and a conceptual framework that addresses those challenges. The framework is composed of five interrelated strong concepts that we adapted from other design spaces. We derived the concepts reflectively, theoretically, and empirically through a design research process in which we created and evaluated a NF BCI, called Mind-Full, designed to help children living in Nepal who had suffered from complex trauma learn to self-regulate anxiety and attention. We add rigor to our derivation methodology by horizontally and vertically grounding our concepts, that is, relating them to similar concepts in the literature and instantiations in other artifacts. We illustrate the generative power of the concepts and the inter-relationships between them through the description of two new NF BCIs we created using the framework for urban and indigenous children with anxiety and attentional challenges. We then show the versatility of our framework by describing how it inspired and informed the conceptual design of three NF BCIs for different types of self-regulation: selective attention and working memory, pain management, and depression. Last, we discuss the contestability, defensibility, and substantiveness of our conceptual framework in order to ensure rigor in our research design process. Our contribution is a rigorously derived design framework that opens up this new and emerging design space of NF BCI's for children for other researchers and designers.
2015
Antle, Alissa N., Chesick, Leslie, Levisohn, Aaron, Sridharan, Srilekha Kirshnamachari, Tan, Perry
Using Neurofeedback to Teach Self-Regulation to Children Living in Poverty Proceedings Article
In: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, pp. 119–128, Association for Computing Machinery, Boston, Massachusetts, 2015, ISBN: 9781450335904.
Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: brain computer interfaces, children, developing countries, evaluation, games for learning, mindfull, neurofeedback, self-regulation
@inproceedings{10.1145/2771839.2771852,
title = {Using Neurofeedback to Teach Self-Regulation to Children Living in Poverty},
author = {Alissa N. Antle and Leslie Chesick and Aaron Levisohn and Srilekha Kirshnamachari Sridharan and Perry Tan},
url = {https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1145/2771839.2771852},
doi = {10.1145/2771839.2771852},
isbn = {9781450335904},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-01-01},
urldate = {2015-01-01},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children},
pages = {119–128},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {Boston, Massachusetts},
series = {IDC '15},
abstract = {In this paper we describe a neuro-feedback system and applications we designed and deployed to help vulnerable children at an NGO-funded school, called Nepal House Kaski, in Pokhara, Nepal. The system, called Mind-Full, enables traumatized children to learn and practice self-regulation by playing simple, culturally appropriate games using an EEG headset connected to an interactive tablet. Children can interact with Mind-Full using body actions that may change their physiology and brain states, which are sensed by the EEG headset and used as input to the games. One of the key challenges was to build an application that the children could immediately understand how to use when they are illiterate, don't speak English and have no computer experience. We describe Mind-Full and highlight the design principles we used to meet these constraints. We report on a subset of findings from a 14-week field experiment in which we use a mixed-methods approach to determine if children improved their ability to self-regulate during gameplay as well as in the classroom, playground and in therapy sessions. Findings from quantitative and qualitative assessment measures suggest that the treatment group significantly improved their ability to calm down and focus in a variety of contexts.},
keywords = {brain computer interfaces, children, developing countries, evaluation, games for learning, mindfull, neurofeedback, self-regulation},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
In this paper we describe a neuro-feedback system and applications we designed and deployed to help vulnerable children at an NGO-funded school, called Nepal House Kaski, in Pokhara, Nepal. The system, called Mind-Full, enables traumatized children to learn and practice self-regulation by playing simple, culturally appropriate games using an EEG headset connected to an interactive tablet. Children can interact with Mind-Full using body actions that may change their physiology and brain states, which are sensed by the EEG headset and used as input to the games. One of the key challenges was to build an application that the children could immediately understand how to use when they are illiterate, don't speak English and have no computer experience. We describe Mind-Full and highlight the design principles we used to meet these constraints. We report on a subset of findings from a 14-week field experiment in which we use a mixed-methods approach to determine if children improved their ability to self-regulate during gameplay as well as in the classroom, playground and in therapy sessions. Findings from quantitative and qualitative assessment measures suggest that the treatment group significantly improved their ability to calm down and focus in a variety of contexts.