Patrice Lynne Weiss

University of Haifa | haifa

Learning in a networked society is presented in this symposium with the basic assumption that “schooling” and “society” cannot be considered as separate entities and should bring together the theoretical and practical tools of scientists in both the social and educational sciences. Despite the powerful potential for cross-fostering of ideas between...

Age-related decline in physiological, physical and cognitive functions may interfere with task performance in complex life situations. This study aims to compare the performance of young and older adults during real and simulated complex daily shopping activities considering physiological, motor and cognitive performance. Fifteen adults aged 25.80...

Background: Navigation skills are required for performance of functional complex tasks and may decline due to aging. Investigation of navigation skills should include measurement of cognitive-executive and motor aspects, which are part of complex tasks. Objective: to compare young and older healthy adults in navigation within a simulated environ...

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to present a retrospective study on clients with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) enrolled in a tele-motion-rehabilitation service program for two or more months. Methods: Data from 82 clients (46 males; 74 with ABI), aged 22-85 years, are reported. The Kinect-based CogniMotion System (ReAbility Online, Gertner I...

Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have particular difficulty in negotiating conflict. A randomized control trial (RCT) was carried out to determine whether the negotiation strategies of adolescents with ASD would be enhanced via a 6 week intervention based on a video modeling application. Adolescents with ASD, aged 12-18 years, were r...

Typing while walking is an example of people’s ability to interact with technology while engaged in real life activities. Indeed, an increasing number of studies have investigated the typing of text messages (texting) as a dual task during locomotion. The objective of this review is to (1) describe the task requirements of texting-while-walking, (2...

Study design: Cross sectional. Introduction: Measuring wrist range of motion (ROM) is an essential procedure in hand therapy clinics. Purpose of the study: To test the reliability and validity of a dynamic ROM assessment, the Camera Wrist Tracker (CWT). Methods: Wrist flexion and extension ROM of 15 patients with distal radius fractures and...

This symposium presents our efforts to reconceptualize learning spaces from their traditional notions as bound and immutable to a view in which the physical and social boundaries are flexible and dynamically connected to the learning itself. We present the work from five international research centers that consider space as a multi-dimensional medi...

The design of tangible and embedded assistive technologies poses unique challenges. We describe the challenges we encountered during the design of "DataSpoon", explain how we overcame them, and suggest design guidelines. DataSpoon is an instrumented spoon that monitors movement kinematics during self-feeding. Children with motor disorders often enc...

In recognition of the limited ecological validity of testing in a laboratory setting, we compared spatial memory performance of healthy young and older adults in a real museum setting and on a computer simulation. In the museum, participants physically moved between display stations to locate hidden tokens; an ongoing representation of previous sea...

The importance of assessing executive functions (EF) using ecologically valid assessments has been discussed extensively. Due to the difficulty of carrying out such assessments in real-world settings on a regular basis, virtual reality has been proposed as a technique to provide complex functional tasks under a variety of differing conditions while...

Aims: Children with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD) have major difficulties in social communication skills, which may impact their performance and participation in everyday life. The goal of this study was to examine whether the StoryTable, an intervention paradigm based on a collaborative narrative, multitouch tabletop interface...

The aim of this paper was to develop and validate an ontology for one class of assistive technology (AT), namely physically controllable pointing devices, using the Delphi method. Six occupational therapists with AT expertise identified important items and categories to the pointing device prescription through a three-round, structured process cons...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the usability of Ontology Supported Computerized Assistive Technology Recommender (OSCAR), a Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) for the assistive technology adaptation process, its impact on learning the matching process, and to determine the relationship between its usability and learnability. Two groups...

The term "Living Lab" was coined to reflect the use of sensors to monitor human behavior in real life environments. Until recently such measurements had been feasible only within experimental laboratory settings. The objective of this paper is to highlight research on health care sensing and monitoring devices that enable direct, objective and accu...

This symposium brings together the theoretical and practical tools of scientists in both the social and educational sciences in order to examine the types of interaction, knowledge construction, social organization and power structures that: (a) occur spontaneously in technology-enhanced learning communities or (b) can be created by design. We refe...

Age-related decline in physiological, physical and cognitive functions as well as disabilities resulting from pathological conditions may interfere with the ability to adapt to the environmental and social demands. It is important to understand and characterize the ways in which these age-related is to present a multi-dimensional approach to assess...

Tele-rehabilitation refers to the use of information and communication technologies to provide rehabilitation services to people remotely in their homes or other environments. The goal is to improve patient access to care by receiving therapy beyond the physical walls of a traditional healthcare facility, thus expanding continuity of rehabilitation...

We present the results of a usability study of “CONTACT”, an application which supports negotiation strategy training via video modeling for enhancing the conflict resolution of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This application was modified from the NoProblem! prototype based on feedback from two focus groups of typically developing...

We present a novel, knowledge-driven approach to prescription of pointing devices that uses the Ontology-Supported Computerized Assistive Technology Recommender (OSCAR), a clinical decision support system (CDSS). Fifty-five occupational therapists were divided into four groups: two assistive technology (AT) expert groups and two novice groups. Novi...

Many children with cerebral palsy (CP) encounter great difficulties mastering self-feeding. We set out to assess the self-feeding skills of young children with CP via a novel instrumented spoon that monitors upper extremity biomechanics involved in eating. We describe the initial stages of an iterative design process, consisting of a focus group wi...

The primary focus of rehabilitation for individuals with loss of upper limb movement as a result of acquired brain injury is the relearning of specific motor skills and daily tasks. This is essential because the loss of upper limb movement often results in a reduced quality of life. Although rehabilitation strives to take advantage of neuroplastic...

Tele-rehabilitation refers to the use of information and communication technologies to provide rehabilitation services to people in their homes or other environments. The objective of this paper was to present the development, validation, and usability testing of a low-cost, markerless, full-body tracking virtual reality system designed to provide...

This chapter presents an overview of the evidence supporting effectiveness of VR for motor rehabilitation and a review of the major technological “breakthroughs” (1986–1995; 1996–2005; 2006-present) that led to the use of VR for motor rehabilitation. A “Force Field” analysis is presented that looks to the future regarding developments anticipated t...

The development of technologies that can be applied to rehabilitation offers tremendous promise for enhancing functional capacity by eliminating or minimizing the functional limitations imposed by disability. As new rehabilitation technologies emerge, it is our responsibility as scientists and clinicians to determine how these can best be used to s...

Typically developing children usually master self-feeding by the age of three years. However, children with Cerebral Palsy and other developmental disabilities encounter great difficulties acquiring this instrumental ability. In an effort to motivate young eaters in the process of acquiring self-feeding abilities, we set out to develop ExciteTray-a...

Virtual reality is the use of interactive simulations to present users with opportunities to perform in virtual environments that appear, sound, and less frequently, feel similar to real-world objects and events. Interactive computer play refers to the use of a game where a child interacts and plays with virtual objects in a computer-generated envi...

This chapter presents NoProblem!, a multi-user interface designed to teach social conversation and social interaction skills to children with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD). HFASD is defined as a per-vasive developmental disorder which involves deficits in socio-communication skills as well as with repetitive behaviors and restri...

To explore the feasibility of using a low-cost, off-the-shelf virtual reality (VR) game to treat young children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and to determine the effect of this intervention on motor function. Nine children, aged 4 to 6 years, referred to physical therapy because of suspected DCD participated in 10 game-based inter...

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between cervical kinematics and subjective measures, including pain intensity, disability, and fear of motion. Twenty-five patients (19 females, 6 males; mean age 39 ± 12.7 years) with chronic neck pain participated in this cross-sectional study. A customized virtual reality system was employed to ev...

This article reports the results of a meta-analysis of technology-based intervention studies for children with autism spectrum disorders. We conducted a systematic review of research that used a pre-post design to assess innovative technology interventions, including computer programs, virtual reality, and robotics. The selected studies provided in...

The purpose of this study was to determine the usability of a virtual reality environment for pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) by assessing the performance of a simple virtual shopping task and comparing their results to typically developing peers. Twenty children with TBI and 20 typically developing children, matched in age and sex, "shopped...

Our objectives are (1) to establish construct validity by comparing task performance with the Virtual Action Planning-Supermarket (VAP-S) by patients with stroke to healthy matched control subjects, (2) to establish concurrent validity by exploring relationships between VAP-S performance and Executive Functions (EFs) and ecological validity by expl...

The goal was to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of a quasi-home-based tele-motion-rehabilitation (TMR) program, using the Gertner System, in improving functional ability of the weak upper extremity post-stroke. Eighteen adults with stroke were randomized into two groups; a quasi-home-based TMR program and a self-training upper extremity home ex...

The objective of this study was to use an advanced VR-based system to explore the extent to which posture control mechanisms in adults can undergo experience-dependent changes when a novel balance task is acquired and retained. Eight healthy young adults practiced a novel complex task with and without a concurrent manual task within a single traini...

Complex virtual environments (VEs) provide a multisensory, three-dimensional representation of real environments enabling their use in rehabilitation research to characterize and probe cognitive and motor abilities. This paper describes the application of a complex VE to characterize different motor and cognitive (executive) functions associated wi...

This study compares the effectiveness of intervention programs using conventional media or low cost off-the-shelf virtual reality (VR) games for young children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Thirty children with DCD were randomly divided into VR and conventional intervention groups. Statistically significant changes following inter...

This study examined the effectiveness of a school-based, collaborative technology intervention combined with cognitive behavioral therapy to teach the concepts of social collaboration and social conversation to children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (n = 22) as well as to enhance their actual social engagement behaviors (collabora...

This paper presents a novel, knowledge-driven approach for pointing device prescription that aims to enhance the prescription process via OSCAR, a Clinical Decision Support System. OSCAR was constructed in a three-stage process: developing a pointing-device ontology; formulating IF-THEN matching rules, and constructing a web-based user interface. E...

Impairments of executive functions (EF) significantly affect the ability to lead an independent lifestyle. Virtual environments offer a way to rehabilitate EF due to their ecological validity. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the effectiveness of a virtual reality (VR) supermarket (VMall) for treatment of EF in patients with Traumatic...

Introduction The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of exercises performed in a 2D video-capture virtual reality (VR) training environment to improve upper limb motor ability in stroke patients compared to those performed in conventional therapy. Methods A small sample randomized control trial, in an outpatient rehabilitation ce...

The aim of this study was to use the Delphi method to develop and validate an ontology for one class of assistive technology (AT), namely physically controllable pointing devices. A three-round, structured process consisting of responses to a series of questionnaires was used to identify items and categories of importance to pointing device prescri...

A multi-user tabletop interface was designed to support reconciliation of a conflict aimed at shifting hostile attitudes and achieving a greater understanding of another viewpoint. The interface provided a setting for face-to-face shared narration and support for the management of disagreements. The interface allows for escalation and de-escalation...

Virtual environments (VEs) provide clinicians and researchers an opportunity to develop and implement an engaging, ecologically valid, complex, life-like interactive 3D simulation, which can be tailored dynamically to characterize and precisely measure functional behaviour in response to different multisensory stimuli. Complex ecological VEs that a...

Virtual reality environments are increasingly being used for upper limb rehabilitation in post-stroke patients. Our goal was to determine if arm reaching movements made in a 2D video-capture virtual reality environment are similar to those made in a comparable physical environment. We compared arm and trunk kinematics for reaches made with the righ...

Background: Many interventions for children with High functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (HFASD) focus on the promotion of social and communication skills, core symptoms of the diagnosis of ASD. Since these children face great challenges in coping with social interactions, they often prefer to engage in solitary, computer-based activities. Tec...

Empowerment is a multi-dimensional social process that helps people gain control over their own lives. Empowerment of people with disabilities entails the motivation to control as well as the knowledge and skills to adapt to and influence one's own rehabilitation process. The goal of empowered rehabilitation is to guide users to achieve their maxim...

The aims of this study were to assess the reliability and validity of the Arabic translation of the Assessment of Computer Task Performance (ACTP) when used for children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) and to determine the relationship between participants' performance when using an adapted pointing device and the teacher's s...

Virtual reality (VR) technology enables evaluation and practice of specific skills in a motivating, user-friendly and safe way. The implementation of virtual game environments within clinical settings has increased substantially in recent years. However, the psychometric properties and feasibility of many applications have not been fully elucidated...

We present the results of two usability studies evaluating the use of collaborative technologies designed to facilitate children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) learning social competence skills through technology-delivered Cognitive- Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The first study examined a co-located games (Join-In Suite) run on a multi-user tab...

Impairments of executive functions (EF) significantly affect the ability to lead an independent lifestyle. Virtual environments (VEs) offer a way to rehabilitate EF due to their ecological validity. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a virtual supermarket (VMall) for treatment of EF in patients with TBI, compared to conve...

In this paper we describe a co-located suite of games on a tabletop device to support social competence training for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This suite has been designed to use patterns of collaboration to support therapists in their use of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). In this paper, we discuss the observations collected duri...

In this paper we describe a co-located interface on a tabletop device to support social competence training for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The interface has been developed on the multi-user DiamondTouch tabletop device as a 3-user application for two children and a facilitator (therapist or teacher). It takes advantage of the DiamondTo...

The COSPATIAL (Communication and social participation: collaborative technologies for interaction and learning) project explores how we can develop effective and useful educational technologies in the form of shared active surfaces (SASs) and collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) to support the enhancement of social competence skills for childr...

In the early-middle stages of Parkinson's disease (PD), polysomnographic studies show early alterations of the structure of the sleep, which may explain frequent symptoms reported by patients, such as daytime drowsiness, loss of attention and concentration, feeling of tiredness. The aim of this study was to verify if there is a correlation between...

To compare cervical kinematics during functional motion in patients with neck pain and in asymptomatic participants using a novel virtual reality assessment. Clinical comparative trial. Participants were recruited from university staff and students, and from a local physical therapy clinic. Patients with chronic neck pain (n=25) and asymptomatic pa...

To assess the use of a video-capture projected VR system for children with acquired brain injury (ABI), and to compare their performance to that of matched healthy controls. Thirty-three children (age range: 6-11.4 years) were divided into two groups: 17 children with ABI and 16 controls matched for age, gender and maternal education. Participants...

Arm motion in healthy humans is characterized by smooth and relatively short paths. The current study focused on 3D reaching in stroke patients. Sixteen right-hemiparetic stroke patients and 8 healthy adults performed 42 reaching movements towards 3 visual targets located at an extended arm distance. Performance was assessed in terms of spatial and...

Background: While various Computer Assisted Instruction tools have been studied, and resulted in mainly positive effects on children with ASD, responses from both professionals and parents have been mixed; along with the obvious advantage of using such environments with children with ASD, there are those who fear that such tools will increase socia...

Background: A deficit in social interaction is considered to be a major characteristic of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Recently a number of computer-based approaches have been used to facilitate social interaction in these children. In the present presentation we describe an intervention study aimed at enhancing social skills in ch...

Tabletop interfaces are a novel class of technologies that are particularly suited to support co-located collaboration. The Collaborative Puzzle Game (CPG) is a tabletop interactive activity developed for fostering collaboration skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The CPG features an interaction rule called Enforced Collaborati...

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a disease with a wide-ranging impact on functional status. The aim of the study was to examine the added value of simultaneously evaluating fatigue, personal ADL and handwriting performance as indicators for functional decline among patients with MS. Participants were 50 outpatients with MS and 26 matched healthy controls...

Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are in need of effective and motivating physical fitness training programs. The aim was to test the effectiveness of a virtual reality (VR)-based exercise program in improving the physical fitness of adults with severe IDD when implemented by on-site caregivers. A research group (N=...

Neck-pain and control group comparative analysis of conventional and virtual reality (VR)-based assessment of cervical range of motion (CROM). To use a tracker-based VR system to compare CROM of individuals suffering from chronic neck pain with CROM of asymptomatic individuals; to compare VR system results with those obtained during conventional as...

Continuous performance tasks (CPTs) embedded in a virtual reality (VR) classroom environment have been shown to be a sensitive and user-friendly assessment tool to detect cognitive deficits related to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The aim of the current study was to compare the performance of children with ADHD on a VR-CPT while...

In this case study, virtual reality was used to augment imaginal exposure in a protocol based on prolonged exposure. A 29-year-old male patient developed posttraumatic stress disorder after surviving a deadly terrorist bulldozer attack on two civilian buses and several cars in Jerusalem; the traumas witnessed by the survivor included a decapitation...

COSPATIAL is a multi-disciplinary project that is using collaborative virtual reality and tabletop devices for training social competence within the theoretical framework of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Our ultimate objective is to create a set of patterns for designing applications in collaborative technologies that are suitable for children with...

Virtual reality (VR) offers a new paradigm for human-computer interaction, by providing to participants a space in which they become an actor in an environment that may be realistic and functional. Its goal is to allow cognitive and sensorimotor activities, performed in real time, in a simulated world, which can be imaginary, symbolic, or a replica...

In Parkinson's disease executive functions are altered. We used a Virtual Reality version of the Multiple Errand Test in order to evaluate decision-making ability in 12 patients and 14 controls. Patients with Parkinson's disease, even if not-demented, showed strategies full of errors, suggesting that impulse control disorder, very frequent in cours...

In recent years an increasing number of people under psychological distress turn to computer-mediated communication for support. A related development is the increasing number of computer-mediated support groups in which people meet, share interests, and exchange socio-emotional support through text-based messages on computer networks. To date, a f...

Background: Video capture virtual reality (VR) systems display the users on a TV or projected screen where they see themselves within a virtual environment (VE) and interact with the virtual stimuli by naturalistic movements without any encumbrance. This is one of the greatest assets of video capture VR systems, making it ideally suited as a tool f...

To explore the potential of the VMall, a virtual supermarket running on a video-capture virtual reality system, as an intervention tool for people who have multitasking deficits after stroke. Poststroke, 4 participants received ten 60-min sessions over 3 weeks using the VMall. The intervention focused on improving multitasking while the participant...

Constructional ability is a necessary part of everyday functioning for adults and children alike. In children, the need for adequate levels of constructional ability is evident during both recreational and school activities. PlayCubes is a dynamic tool that supports monitoring a variety of the perceptual-motor processes needed while children perfor...

Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are in need of effective physical fitness training programs, leisure time opportunities and strategies to improve their participation. The overall objective was to gather ldquolessons learnedrdquo towards the formulation of a best practices model for the application of VR interventi...

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a 3-week intervention in which a co-located cooperation enforcing interface, called StoryTable, was used to facilitate collaboration and positive social interaction for six children, aged 8-10 years, with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). The intervention focused on exposi