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Background: This study was motivated by the need to enhance Mandarin learning through embodied interactions and physical engagement methods. While most studies confirm the positive effects of touchscreen devices on learning, mixed findings suggest a need for more engaging methods. This research addresses these gaps by exploring the benefits of embodied interaction through the Shaking‐On game app, an embodied question‐response platform, in comparison to Kahoot. Objectives: To compare the learning effectiveness of the Shaking‐On app, which incorporates physical shaking interactions, with the conventional quiz platform Kahoot in promoting Mandarin learning and positive emotional experiences. Methods: A total of 158 junior high school students participated in the study, engaging in 15‐minute sessions once a week for 3 weeks in a formal classroom setting. Participants were divided into two groups: one using the Shaking‐On app and the other using Kahoot. The study employed a comparative analysis framework based on achievement emotion theory to evaluate learning outcomes and emotional responses. Furthermore, the classroom response system (CRS) analysis was used to assess the cognitive and affective parameters of the learning tasks in the Shaking‐On app and Kahoot, providing detailed insight into how different interactive tasks contributed to learning. Results and Conclusions: The results indicated that the Shaking‐On app significantly enhanced Mandarin learning and engagement compared with Kahoot. Participants using Shaking‐On experienced higher levels of interactive situational interest and flow, while test anxiety remained consistent across both groups. These findings suggest that incorporating embodied interactions into digital learning tools can substantially benefit student engagement and learning outcomes. The study indicated that such apps could be effectively integrated into classroom settings to enhance student learning. Educators and game developers are encouraged to integrate such interactive elements to improve the efficacy and appeal of educational applications. Lay Description: What Is currently known about this topic?: Digital game‐based learning enhances motivation, critical thinking and retention.Embodied cognition links bodily experiences to improved learning outcomes.Physical activities in learning can boost motivation, interest and performance.Engagement through physical interaction may help reduce test anxiety. What does this paper add?: Shaking‐On is more effective in Mandarin learning than Kahoot as classroom response system.Bodily engagement in Shaking‐On enhances situational interest and flow.No significant difference in test anxiety between Shaking‐On and Kahoot users.Embodied interactions provide substantial benefits in digital learning tools. Implications for practice: Educators should integrate embodied interactions to enhance student engagement.Game developers can design more effective learning apps with embodied elements.Future research should explore Shaking‐On's impact on other subjects.Policies should support the development of interactive digital learning tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational wearables are redefining our presence in the world and transforming our lifestyles by engendering a seamless connection between the wearer and the worn. Despite numerous original studies on the development as well as the current advances of wearables, a systematic review from the standpoint of fashion seems to be lacking. Thus, this systematic review aimed to explore the current state of research on computational fashion in wearables' literature in terms of the key domains, theoretical models, materials, interaction modalities, and existing gaps. To this aim, the authors built a search string based on the keywords in related topics and conducted the research using Scopus databases. As a result, a total of 4777 papers between January 1990 to August 2021 were screened and 82 research study papers finally passed the inclusion-exclusion criteria for the purpose of the review. The results display: first, computational wearables' studies are becoming more inclined towards the aesthetic aspects of fashion wearables; second, although the functional aspects of the design processes received more attention, embodiment was the most discussed theory in the included studies; third, the extensive application of fabric implied the need for new fabrics with both smart quality and flexibility to afford aesthetic aspects; fourth, ambient data as input modalities received extensive attention in fashion wearables; fifth, kinetic output modalities as novel modes of fashion expression are becoming as prevalent as visual modalities. Finally, our findings provide a detailed overview of distinct facets of studies on computational fashion and a future research agenda for researchers and designers working on fashion and wearables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMost research about augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) has focused on improving use of and access to speech generating devices (SGDs). However, many adults with significant physical and developmental disabilities express a preference for unaided, embodied forms of communication. This study used conversation analysis (CA) techniques to analyze the forms and functions of embodied communication that occurred during interactions between a young man who used unaided, embodied communication and an SGD to communicate with a familiar communication partner. Close analysis revealed that embodied resources were required for both unaided and aided forms of communication. Furthermore, both participants used their bodies to establish interactional spaces with different focal points during interaction, which placed different demands on the aided speaker. Unfortunately, when the SGD was the focal point, problematic demands were placed on the aided speaker, which in turn resulted in increased embodied effort on his part. The forms and functions of the body, differences in the participants’ interactions when communication did and did not involve the SGD, and implications for research and practice are all reported and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous research studies have focused on either caregivers' or residents' perception and use of social robots, this article offers an empirical and theoretical examination of joint activities in triadic human–robot interaction. The symptomatology of dementia creates an asymmetrical relation wherein the impetus to employ a robot often originates from the caregiver. Drawing on field work and video recorded interactions in dementia care homes, the article investigates how caregivers draw on embodied resources to involve residents and robot animals in interaction. The analysis demonstrates how caregivers promote commitment and encounter resistance with residents. We draw on the theory of sociomaterial interactionism to study situated interaction between bodies in a meaning‐generating process. By re‐conceptualising the theoretical notions of manipulation and recruitment, the article offers an approach for studying orientations that distinguish between reciprocity of agential objects. We show that caregivers usually distinguish between interactions with people and machines by anticipating a specific response from the robots (manipulation), while they invite participation in a broader sense from residents (recruitment). Social friction arises, however, if caregivers act upon the residents as embodied objects in manipulative ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Repetition has often been argued to be a semiotic device that iconically signifies 'more content', such as intensity and plurality. However, through multimodal interaction analysis of materials in English, Estonian, and Swedish, this paper demonstrates how self-repetition is used to coordinate actions across participants and temporally organize the ongoing activity. The data are taken from infant mealtimes, pilates classes, dance training, boardgames, rock climbing, and opera rehearsals. Repetition of both lexical and non-lexical tokens can prolong, postpone, and generally organize segments of action as well as co-create rhythms and moves in a moment-by-moment reflexive relationship with other (non-vocalizing) participants. A crucial feature of repetitions is that they can be flexibly extended to fit the other's public performance, its launching, continuation, and projectable completion. We argue that the iconicity of repetition emerges through its indexical relationship to other bodies, as a real-time jointly achieved phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-lab elicitation studies inform the design of gestures by having the participants suggest actions to activate the system functions. Conversely, crowd-sourced identification studies follow the opposite path, asking the users to associate the control actions with functions. Identification studies have been used to validate the gestures produced by elicitation studies, but not to design interactive systems. In this paper, we show that identification studies can be combined with in situ observations to design the gestures for data exploration with public displays. To illustrate this method, we developed two versions of a gesture-controlled system for data exploration with 368 users: one designed through an elicitation study, and one designed through in situ observations followed by an identification study. Our results show that the users discovered the majority of the gestures with similar accuracy across the two prototypes. Additionally, the in situ approach enabled the direct recruitment of target users, and the crowd-sourced approach typical of identification studies expedited the design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers are increasingly calling for more computational thinking (CT) teaching tools and activities designed for young children. Considering young children's need to draw on their bodily experiences to learn abstract concepts, this study applied the embodied cognition perspective to design an unplugged (non-computer-based) toolkit with activities that foster CT. This study aimed to explore young children's experiences in unplugged activities. Specifically, children's perceptions about the activities were investigated, and their embodied interactions during the activities were analyzed to reveal how CT emerges as an embodied phenomenon. Results indicate that children had positive perceptions about the activities. In addition, young children's algorithmic thinking and debugging emerged most frequently. Furthermore, this study found that CT extended to both the unplugged toolkit and children's bodies and emerged in perception-action loops. This research provides insight into the instructional design of young children's CT and helps researchers understand how young children develop CT from an embodied cognition perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This special issue explores interaction and language use in situations involving human and non-human participants. Bringing together methodologies and theoretical approaches in linguistics and interactional studies, namely Conversation Analysis, the volume focuses on the social actions accomplished in interspecies interaction and the linguistic construction of non-human perception and meaning-making. The studies of the volume deal with cat's bodily and vocal cues used for coordinating human participant's attention to a shared object, animal actions as conditionally relevant to human utterances within sequence organization, dogs' embodied responses to playing partners' verbal turns within a ball game, and expressions of non-human sensory perception through reported animal thoughts. The special issue introduces Interspecies Pragmatics as an approach used for studying human-animal interactions and relationships, with a particular focus on building multimodal understanding in these specific environments. Interspecies Pragmatics aligns with various interdisciplinary approaches in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Human-Animal Studies, Posthumanism, Ecocriticism, Ecolinguistics, Biosemiotics). By undoing conceptual hierarchies and boundaries between humans and other living beings, we can gain insights into shared interests and meanings across species boundaries. • Animals' first and second actions are conditionally relevant to human utterances. • Cats use bodily cues to direct humans' attention to a shared object. • Dogs distinguish addressed recipient from the unaddressed recipient. • By reporting animal thoughts humans share awareness of non-human perceptual worlds. • Interspecies Pragmatics explores the Human-Animal bond in language and interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the critical role of art therapy in solving various psychological problems, and introduces an innovative immersive and interactive art therapy mechanism based on artificial intelligence (AI), which combines machine learning and AI algorithms to realize embodied interactions between the learner, the machine, and the environment.The study analyzes the changes of students’ status before and after receiving art therapy in terms of various dimensions, including students’ social avoidance, general well-being, and self-emotions. Using regression modeling, the study validated the positive effects of art therapy on students’ mental health, cognitive abilities, and depression levels. It showed that art therapy had a statistically significant impact on improving students’ mental health, cognition, and reducing depressive symptoms at the 1% level of significance. Students who participated in art therapy had a 0.329 unit increase in mental health scores compared to non-participants, and this study provides a valuable reference and idea for the application of expressive art therapy in mental health education.

By analysing the movements through space of a famous conversation analyst delivering a well-known lecture, this paper reveals the creative construction of space within the social and physical constraints of the lecture hall, and in so doing contributes to the embodied analysis of humans in material environments. While founded in a multimodal or embodied conversation analysis, it uses terminology and insights from dance to help ‘see’ and analyse the movements as ‘footwork’ and ‘figures’.

The emerging field of human-building interaction (HBI) has its roots in the historical trends of the development of architecture and human-computer interaction (HCI). Advancements in building information modelling (BIM), sensing, and actuation technologies as well as the commodification and miniaturisation of microprocessors over the past two decades are transforming what once were quixotic visions of a cybernetic architecture into reality. This new reality which integrates computation with architecture opens up different kinds of engagements in the ways we design, use, and inhabit our built environments. A question that follows this new reality is: how can we conceptualise human experience in such environments? Thus far, the lived human experience of such interactions has been an overlooked aspect in HBI-related research. In this article, we provide an initial experience framework for HBI underpinned by existing literature from the HCI and architecture domains on the subjective, lived-in experience of architecture and findings derived from a case study of a field-deployed HBI interface. The research objective of our framework is to outline aspects of HBI lived experiences that can be used as guiding lenses for HBI designers and practitioners who wish to design for and assess such experiences.

In-lab elicitation studies inform the design of gestures by having the participants suggest actions to activate the system functions. Conversely, crowd-sourced identification studies follow the opposite path, asking the users to associate the control actions with functions. Identification studies have been used to validate the gestures produced by elicitation studies, but not to design interactive systems. In this paper, we show that identification studies can be combined with in situ observations to design the gestures for data exploration with public displays. To illustrate this method, we developed two versions of a gesture-controlled system for data exploration with 368 users: one designed through an elicitation study, and one designed through in situ observations followed by an identification study. Our results show that the users discovered the majority of the gestures with similar accuracy across the two prototypes. Additionally, the in situ approach enabled the direct recruitment of target users, and the crowd-sourced approach typical of identification studies expedited the design process.

This paper undertakes an analysis of the streaming platform Twitch. Twitch is premised upon a single Streamer and a large audience. Interaction between a Streamer and an individual Chat member is constructed by the Streamer through a form of acknowledgement and ratification that leads to a momentary encounter. Strategic 'reading' and reading aloud not only function to link and sustain conversation, they also structure the embodied performance of the streamer, who must shift their visual attention away from the primary activity. These head movements are then a primary resource for interaction.Through a Conversation Analytic approach, the paper identifies a 'reading-reading aloud-responding' action or R(RA)R as an interactional resource for engaging audience members in ongoing conversation. The analysis is in line with the 'respecification' of 'mediated interaction' (Arminen et al., 2016) and moves towards a 'digital CA' (Giles et al., 2015). It contributes to an ongoing project that looks to 'digitise Sacks' (Housley et al., 2017) and inform methodological development of future analysis of technology-mediated interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores teacher's situated and embodied interactions with students in second language (L2) academic discussions and how the teacher languaging dynamics facilitate students' learning when they are engaged in an academic discussion outside the classroom. The situated learning enables learning to take place in contexts other than classroom that affords the environment for embodied interaction and legitimizes the learning community with shared communicative purposes. The first-order teacher languaging dynamics are recontextualized in the situated learning contexts that encourage knowledge exchange as social learning engagements to enable students to bodily experience learning and develop the process of knowing. With a distributed view to language, a multi-scalar approach to multimodal interaction analysis is employed to investigate how the teacher dynamically interacts with students through embodied semiosis in the situated learning context and how academic knowledge is bodily enacted by the teacher languaging behaviours in the dynamic embodied environment. The findings show different embodied strategies are deployed by the teacher to bodily ground the academic knowledge in both vocal tract gesturing and hand movements where the meanings are generalized, visualized, objectified, concretized and symbolized in first-order languaging dynamics to facilitate and afford student sense-making and learning in academic discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]