Lecture 4

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CLever: Cognitive Levers
—

Anatomy is Not Destiny: Creating Eyeglasses for the Mind

Gerhard Fischer, Hal Eden, and Holger Dick

Fall Semester 2010

gerhard@colorado.edu; haleden@colorado.edu; holger.dick@gmail.com;  

September 8, 2010

Basic Message and Fundamental Opportunity

create new challenge for Information and Communication Technologies and
Human-Centered Computing

create new support and opportunities for
 people with cognitive disabilities

Why Anatomy does not have to be Destiny?

• Postman, N. (1985) Amusing Ourselves to Death—Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Penguin Books, New York, p 14)

“The invention of eyeglasses in the twelfth century not only made it possible to improve defective vision but suggested the idea that human beings need not accept as final either the endowments of nature nor the ravages of time.

Eyeglasses refuted the belief that anatomy is destiny by putting forward the idea that our minds as well as our bodies are improvable!”

• Engelbart, D. & Hooper, K. (1988) "The Augmentation System Framework." In S. Ambron & K. Hooper (Eds.), Interactive Multimedia, Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA, pp. 15-31., p 19)

“the components of an augmentation system are the bundle of all things that can be added to what a human is genetically endowed with, the purpose of which is to augment these basic human capabilities in order to solve the problems of human society”

Distributed Intelligence (or Distributed Cognition)

• claim: distributed intelligence

• combines “knowledge in the head” with “knowledge in the world”
• provides an effective theoretical framework for technology for improving cognitive function
• provides guidelines how artifacts, tools, and socio-technical environments can change tasks and empower human beings
• transcends the traditional view that human cognition exists solely ‘inside’ a person’s head

• forms of distribution:

• human?? human: across groups, teams, social networks, communities
• human ?? artifacts: between internal (memory, attention, executive function) and external (artifacts, tools) structures and resources

Technologies for Improving Cognitive Function

• technologies for improving cognitive function

• are not restricted to people with cognitive disabilities
• are the fundamental achievement of humankind to create the world in which we live today
• technologies in this context are very broadly defined including “mind tools” for performing cognitive work (e.g.: musical notation, Arabic instead of Roman numerals,.........)

• all human beings have cognitive limitations (limits of short-term memory ? reading and writing)

• working with people with cognitive disabilities provides unique challenges and unique opportunities to further advance our understanding of human-centered computing

The Unaided, Individual Human Mind

<<the weight stands for task difficulty>>

• individuals without cognitive disabilities:

• individuals with cognitive disabilities:

Support with Cognitive Tools for Individuals

• the same task are not challenging enough anymore

• more challenging tasks can be attempted

Support Groups with Cognitive Tools

Matching Humans and Tools

• mismatch between needs and support tools

• creating a match ? finding the “right” tool (with personalization and adaptation mechanism)

Tools for Living and Tools for Learning

• tools for living (doing tasks with tools):

• grounded in a distributed intelligence perspective
• intelligence is mediated by tools for achieving activities that would be error prone, challenging, or impossible to achieve (e.g., microscope, telescope, ...)

• tools for learning (scaffolding with fading):

• objective: autonomous performance by people without tools
• examples: training wheels, wizards, external scripts, templates, prompting systems

• the fundamental question: what does it mean to “learn” in the 21st century in which powerful tools are available for many intellectual activities?

A Tool for Learning —Training Wheels

A Tool for Living — Adult Tricycle

Overview of Tools for Living and Tools for Learning

Independence

• tools for living ? people will be dependent on the tool

• but: the availability of the tool may give people the independence to engage in personally relevant activities (e.g., reading, mobility, living by themselves, .......)

• question: will dependence in one dimension increase independence in another dimension?

• opportunity: while some people might have no problems to learn to perform the tasks without tools (e.g., spelling), they use tools for doing these “low level tasks” and can therefore focus on the more interesting tasks

Cognitive Levers (CLever)

A Research Project of the Center for LifeLong Learning and Design

• supported by the Coleman Institute (begin: August 2000)

• Coleman Institute at the University of Colorado

• 
  
  • funded by a generous endowment from Bill and Claudia Coleman for research on Cognitive Disabilities
  • supports research across many different disciplines
  • director: David Braddock
  • more information: http://www.colemaninstitute.org/

• objectives of CLever:

• 
  
  • “helping people help themselves”
  • “give people a voice that do not have one”
  • supporting clients by empowering caregivers
  • more information: http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/clever/

Identity of CLever within the
Cognitive Disabilities Research Community

• next generation of socio-technical environments

• understanding and honoring the tradition (“how things are”)

• transcending current practices and processes (“how things could be”)

• transdisciplinary collaboration and education between research communities in cognitive disability and information and communication technologies ? “Computers and X”

The Story Shown in the Video

• specific:

• scenario: a woman with cognitive disabilities (memory problems, no capacity for planning and remembering) and her mother
• focus: human-centered public transportation systems

• general: the scenario shows socio-technical environments to help people with cognitive disabilities — applicable also for:

• elderly people (e.g., with Alzheimer)
• out-of-town visitors and foreigners
• everyone

• empirical study to understand “how things are”: many people have difficulties to use current public transportation systems including

• maps
• schedules
• labels and signs
• landmarks
• time

MAPS, Mobility-for-All, and Lifeline

The MAPS Script Editor: Design for Designers

Remote Support Environments: Lifeline Caregiver Console

Remote Support Environments: Lifeline Client Console

Assessment

• medical model (focus on the disability) ? social model (empowerment, independence, socialization)

• the analogy with eyeglasses — a simple problem:

• they represent technologies that can be "fitted" in a lab setting
• if done properly, can be used in the world with little need for social support
• refinements:

• contact lenses
• Lasik surgery

Assessment

• 21^st century skills: what do human need to learn to successfully take advantage of tools and external resources (e.g., pervasive computing, always-on Internet access, reliable service networks, and sufficient level of technological fluency)?

• danger of a decrease in the power of the aided, collective human mind

• information overload: continuous partial attention and the attention economy
• “always on” implies ? constantly being accessible makes someone inaccessible
• over-reliance on tools for living

Over-Reliance on Tools for Living

Over-Reliance on Tools for Living

Low-Tech Reminding and Prompting Techniques

Creating “Windows into the Mind” with Engaging Activities
—
Example: Google/SketchUp and Autism

more info: http://sketchup.google.com/spectrum.html

• SketchUp: useful and usable tool with a low threshold and a high ceiling for 3-D representations

• accidental observation: children with Autism spectrum disorders were using SketchUp to produce remarkable work

• question: why and how?

Example-1 (from high school student with Asperger’s Syndrome)

Student was given drawing to the left and asked to reproduce it using SketchUp (result on the right)

Example-2 (from same student)

a home complete with pool and inside features

Example-3 (different high school students profoundly affected by his Autism: non-verbal, socially isolated)

unlikely that he will be able to use SketchUp in a vocational manner ? but it offers him one of very few recreational opportunities

Mountains and Concentric Circles

Explore New Research Methodologies

• exploit the dual use strategy (or “space program effect”)

• humans with special needs and with different cognitive abilities can help to understand the thinking of humans in general
• National Research Council Study: “scientific understanding of the aging population and technological support”

• beyond the laboratory ? emphasize the social dimensions of technology approaches, and contrast it with technology explored only in a laboratory context

• claim: ethnographic methods are a natural approach to designing assistive technologies, because the human and social aspects are crucial

• global objective of CLever: engage in basic research on real problems

Ryan Patterson — A L3D Undergraduate Research Apprentice

Conclusions: Returning to the Basic Message
—

Technology for Improving Cognitive Functions

• will provide people with cognitive disabilities with new opportunities and a different quality of life

• will address major social and economical challenges (e.g., aging populations, traumatic brain injury)

• has the potential to make fundamental contributions and identify fundamental research issues in the world of the 21st century by “creating eyeglasses for the mind”!

Further Information

• Weir, S. (1987) Cultivating Minds, Harper and Row, New York.

• Postman, N. (1985) Amusing Ourselves to Death—Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Penguin Books, New York.

• Salomon, G. (Ed.) (1993) Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

• National-Research-Council (2004) Technology for Adaptive Aging, National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

• Pollack, M. E. (2005) "Intelligent Technology for an Aging Population: The Use of AI to Assist Elders with Cognitive Impairment," AI Magazine, 26(2), pp. 9-24.

• ACM CHI 2006 Workshop on Designing Technology for People with Cognitive Impairments http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~joanna/CHI2006Workshop_CognitiveTechnologies/

Further Information — L3D

• Carmien, S., Dawe, M., Fischer, G., Gorman, A., Kintsch, A., & Sullivan, J. F. (2005) "Socio-Technical Environments Supporting People with Cognitive Disabilities Using Public Transportation," Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction (ToCHI), 12(2), pp. 233-262.

• Fischer, G. (2006) "Distributed Intelligence: Extending the Power of the Unaided, Individual Human Mind." In Proceedings of Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI) Conference, Venice, May, 2006, pp. 7-14.

• dePaula, R. (2004) The Construction of Usefulness: How Users and Context Create Meaning with a Social Networking System, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder.

• Carmien, S. (2006) Moving the Fulcrum: Socio-Technical Environments Supporting Distributed Cognition for Persons with Cognitive Disabilities, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Colorado, Boulder

• Dawe, M. (2006) "Desperately Seeking Simplicity: How Young Adults with Cognitive Disabilities and Their Families Adopt Assistive Technologies." In Proceedings of CHI 2006: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, pp. 1143-1152.

• Fischer, G. (2002) Beyond 'Couch Potatoes': From Consumers to Designers and Active Contributors, in FirstMonday (Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet), Available at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_12/fischer/.