Laut Jeffrey, Cappa Francesco, Nov Oded, Porfiri Maurizio
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering, Six MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, NY, United States of America; Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Via Eudossiana 18, Rome 00185, Italy.
Department of Business and Management, LUISS Guido Carli University, Viale Pola 12, Rome 00198, Italy.
PLoS One. 2015 Mar 20;10(3):e0117013. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117013. eCollection 2015.
Patient motivation is an important factor to consider when developing rehabilitation programs. Here, we explore the effectiveness of active participation in web-based citizen science activities as a means of increasing participant engagement in rehabilitation exercises, through the use of a low-cost haptic joystick interfaced with a laptop computer. Using the joystick, patients navigate a virtual environment representing the site of a citizen science project situated in a polluted canal. Participants are tasked with following a path on a laptop screen representing the canal. The experiment consists of two conditions: in one condition, a citizen science component where participants classify images from the canal is included; and in the other, the citizen science component is absent. Both conditions are tested on a group of young patients undergoing rehabilitation treatments and a group of healthy subjects. A survey administered at the end of both tasks reveals that participants prefer performing the scientific task, and are more likely to choose to repeat it, even at the cost of increasing the time of their rehabilitation exercise. Furthermore, performance indices based on data collected from the joystick indicate significant differences in the trajectories created by patients and healthy subjects, suggesting that the low-cost device can be used in a rehabilitation setting for gauging patient recovery.
在制定康复计划时，患者的积极性是一个需要考虑的重要因素。在此，我们探讨通过使用与笔记本电脑连接的低成本触觉操纵杆，积极参与基于网络的公民科学活动作为提高参与者对康复锻炼参与度的一种方式的有效性。使用操纵杆，患者在一个虚拟环境中导航，该虚拟环境代表了位于一条受污染运河中的公民科学项目的地点。参与者的任务是在笔记本电脑屏幕上沿着代表运河的路径行进。该实验包括两种情况：一种情况是包含公民科学部分，参与者对来自运河的图像进行分类；另一种情况是没有公民科学部分。这两种情况都在一组接受康复治疗的年轻患者和一组健康受试者身上进行了测试。在两项任务结束时进行的一项调查显示，参与者更喜欢执行科学任务，并且更有可能选择重复它，即使这会增加他们康复锻炼的时间。此外，基于从操纵杆收集的数据的性能指标表明，患者和健康受试者创建的轨迹存在显著差异，这表明这种低成本设备可用于康复环境中以评估患者的恢复情况。
