Unsupervised Screen Exposure and Poor Language Development: A Scoping Review to Assess Current Evidence and Suggest Priorities for Research.

Screen exposure has both negative and positive effects on the level of language skills a child acquires. The purpose of this review is to address current literature on the possible relationship between unsupervised screen exposure and language development in children and to provide recommendations to caregivers regarding screen exposure of children, taking into consideration the possible effects. A scoping review was conducted using the PubMed/MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online) database.

Neural correlates of thermal stimulation during active touch.

Introduction: Thermal feedback technologies have been explored in human-computer interaction to provide secondary information and enhance the overall user experience. Unlike fast-response haptic modalities such as vibration and force feedback, the human brain's processes associated with thermal feedback are not fully understood.

Methods: In this study, we utilize electroencephalography (EEG) brain imaging to systematically examine the neural correlates associated with a wide range of thermal stimuli, including 9, 15, 32, and 42°C, during active touch at the fingertip.

Origami-Based Haptic Syringe for Local Anesthesia Simulator.

Although medical simulators have benefited from the use of haptics and virtual reality (VR) for decades, the former has become the bottleneck in producing a low-cost, compact, and accurate training experience. This is particularly the case for the inferior alveolar nerve block (IANB) procedure in dentistry, which is one of the most difficult motor skills to acquire. As existing works are still oversimplified or overcomplicated for practical deployment, we introduce an origami-based haptic syringe interface for IANB local anesthesia training.

Origami-Inspired Vibrotactile Actuator (OriVib): Design and Characterization.

The use of vibrotactile feedback, in place of a full-fledged force feedback experience, has recently received increased attention in haptic communities due to their clear advantages in terms of cost, expressiveness, and wearability. However, designers and engineers are required to trade off a number of technical challenges when designing vibrotactile actuators, including expressiveness (a wide band of actuation frequency), flexibility, and the complexity of the manufacturing process. To address these challenges, we present the design and characterization of an origami-inspired flexible vibrotactile actuator, named OriVib, with a tunable resonance frequency (expressiveness), an origami-inspired design (flexible, soft contact with the human body), and a streamlined manufacturing process (low-cost).

A Comparison of Vibrotactile Feedback and Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) for Motor Response During Active Hand Movement.

Wearable haptic technologies have garnered recent widespread attention due to increased accessibility, functionality, and affordability. These systems typically provide haptic feedback to augment the human ability to interact with their environment. This study compares two haptic feedback modalities, vibrotactile and EMS, against visual feedback to elicit a motor response during active hand movement.

Clinical and Microbiological Factors Associated With Abscess Formation in Adult Acute Epiglottitis.

Objectives: To evaluate clinical and microbiological findings that are correlated with abscess formation in adult acute epiglottitis (AE).

Methods: We reviewed 140 cases of adult AE. Demographic, clinical, imaging, and microbiological findings are analyzed for all patients with AE in comparison to those with epiglottic abscess (EA).

Contactless Kinesthetic Feedback to Support Handwriting Using Magnetic Force.

Handwriting is a fundamental human skill that is essential for communication yet is one of the most complex skills to be mastered. Pen-based interaction with touchscreen devices are increasingly used in digital handwriting practices to simulate pen and paper experience, but are mostly based on auditory-visual feedback. Given that handwriting relies on visual and motor skills, haptic feedback is recently explored to augment audio-visual systems to further support the handwriting process.

FaceGuard: A Wearable System To Avoid Face Touching.

Most people touch their faces unconsciously, for instance to scratch an itch or to rest one's chin in their hands. To reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), public health officials recommend against touching one's face, as the virus is transmitted through mucous membranes in the mouth, nose and eyes. Students, office workers, medical personnel and people on trains were found to touch their faces between 9 and 23 times per hour.

Mid-Air Tactile Feedback Co-Located With Virtual Touchscreen Improves Dual-Task Performance.

The use of haptic technology has recently become essential in Human-Computer Interaction to improve performance and user experience. Mid-air tactile feedback co-located with virtual touchscreen displays have a great potential to improve the performance in dual-task situations, such as when using a phone while walking or driving. The purpose of this article is to investigate the effects of augmenting virtual touchscreen with mid-air tactile feedback to improve dual-task performance where the primary task is driving in a simulation environment and the secondary task involves interacting with a virtual touchscreen.

Investigating Haptic Guidance Methods for Teaching Children Handwriting Skills.

Haptics technologies have the potential to considerably improve the acquisition of handwriting skills by providing physical assistance to improve movement accuracy and precision. To date, very few studies have thoroughly examined the effectiveness of various haptic guidance methods to leverage the acquisition of handwriting skills. In this paper, we examine the role of several methods for haptic guidance, namely full haptic guidance, partial haptic guidance, disturbance haptic guidance, and no-haptic guidance toward improving the learning outcomes of handwriting skills acquisition for typical children.

Combining Full and Partial Haptic Guidance Improves Handwriting Skills Development.

It has been shown in previous studies that haptic guidance improves the learning outcomes of handwriting motor skills. Full and partial haptic guidance are developed and evaluated in the literature. In this paper, we present two experimental studies to examine whether combining full and partial haptic guidance is more effective for improving handwriting skills than merely full or partial guidance methods.

A Vibrotactile Alarm System for Pleasant Awakening.

There has been a vast development of personal informatics devices combining sleep monitoring with alarm systems, in order to find an optimal time to awaken a sleeping person in a pleasant way. Most of these systems implement auditory feedback, which is not always pleasant and may disturb other sleepers. We present an adaptive alarm system that detects sleeping cycles and triggers alarm signal during shallow sleep, to minimize sleep inertia.

Mid-Air Tactile Stimulation for Pain Distraction.

Using the human sense of touch, pain control has been studied for decades. With the rise of Virtual Reality (VR) and haptic technologies, creating VR and haptic sensations provide a unique opportunity for pain distraction. In this paper, we present an experimental study to test whether VR and mid-air ultrasound tactile stimulation reduce perceived pain simulated via the cold pressor test, i.

The knowledge of osteoporosis risk factors in a Greek female population.

Objectives: The social and economic burden of osteoporosis is important since it concerns a continuously aging population, while the disease is silent until the emergence of fractures. Aim of the study was to assess female population knowledge about osteoporosis risk factors and to identify the risk factors of the studied population.

Methods: A sample of 99 (aged: 61.