Nicoli Giovanni, Pavon Giulia, Grayson Andrew, Emerson Anne, Mitra Suvobrata
School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Front Integr Neurosci. 2023 Aug 3;17:1181025. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2023.1181025. eCollection 2023.
Many techniques have attempted to provide physical support to ease the execution of a typing task by individuals with developmental disabilities (DD). These techniques have been controversial due to concerns that the support provider's touch can influence the typed content. The most common interpretation of assisted typing as an ideomotor phenomenon has been qualified recently by studies showing that users with DD make identifiable contributions to the process. This paper suggests a neurophysiological pathway by which touch could lower the cognitive load of seated typing by people with DD. The required sensorimotor processes (stabilizing posture and planning and executing manual reaching movements) and cognitive operations (generating and transcribing linguistic material) place concurrent demands on cognitive resources, particularly executive function (EF). A range of developmental disabilities are characterized by deficits in sensorimotor and EF capacity. As light touch has been shown to facilitate postural coordination, it is proposed that a facilitator's touch could assist the seated typist with sensorimotor and EF deficits by reducing their sensorimotor workload and thereby freeing up shared cognitive resources for the linguistic elements of the task. This is the first theoretical framework for understanding how a facilitator's touch may assist individuals with DD to contribute linguistic content during touch-assisted typing.
许多技术都试图提供身体支持，以减轻发育障碍（DD）患者执行打字任务的难度。由于担心支持提供者的触摸会影响打字内容，这些技术一直存在争议。最近，一些研究对将辅助打字视为一种观念运动现象的最常见解释进行了修正，这些研究表明，发育障碍患者在这一过程中做出了可识别的贡献。本文提出了一条神经生理途径，通过这条途径，触摸可以降低发育障碍患者坐着打字时的认知负荷。所需的感觉运动过程（稳定姿势、计划和执行手动够取动作）和认知操作（生成和转录语言材料）同时对认知资源提出了要求，特别是执行功能（EF）。一系列发育障碍的特征是感觉运动和执行功能能力存在缺陷。由于轻触已被证明有助于姿势协调，因此有人提出，协助者的触摸可以通过减少发育障碍患者坐着打字时的感觉运动工作量，从而为任务的语言元素腾出共享的认知资源，来帮助有感觉运动和执行功能缺陷的打字者。这是第一个理论框架，用于理解协助者的触摸如何在触摸辅助打字过程中帮助发育障碍患者贡献语言内容。
