Tanner Alexandra, Urech Andreas, Schulze Hartmut, Manser Tanja
School of Applied Psychology, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Olten, Switzerland.
City of Bern (Digital Stadt Bern), Bern, Switzerland.
JMIR Rehabil Assist Technol. 2023 Dec 25;10:e48031. doi: 10.2196/48031.
Promoting the well-being of older adults in an aging society requires new solutions. One resource might be the use of social robots for group activities that promote physical and cognitive stimulation. Engaging in a robot-assisted group activity may help in the slowdown of physical and cognitive decline in older adults. Currently, our knowledge is limited on whether older adults engage in group activities with humanlike social robots and whether they experience a positive affect while doing so. Both are necessary preconditions to achieve the intended effects of a group activity.
Our pilot study has 2 aims. First, we aimed to develop and pilot an observational coding scheme for robot-assisted group activities because self-report data on engagement and mood of nursing home residents are often difficult to obtain, and the existing observation instruments do have limitations. Second, we aimed to investigate older adults' engagement and mood during robot-assisted group activities in 4 different nursing care homes in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.
We developed an observation system, inspired by existing tools, for a structured observation of engagement and mood of older adults during a robot-assisted group activity. In this study, 85 older adult residents from 4 different care homes in Switzerland participated in 5 robot-assisted group activity sessions, and they were observed using our developed system. The data were collected in the form of video clips that were assessed by 2 raters regarding engagement (direction of gaze, posture as well as body expression, and activity) and mood (positive and negative affects). Both variables were rated on a 5-point rating scale.
Our pilot study findings show that the engagement and mood of older adults can be assessed reliably by using the proposed observational coding scheme. Most participants actively engaged in robot-assisted group activities (mean 4.19, SD 0.47; median 4.0). The variables used to measure engagement were direction of gaze (mean 4.65, SD 0.49; median 5.0), posture and body expression (mean 4.03, SD 0.71; median 4.0), and activity (mean 3.90, SD 0.65; median 4.0). Further, we observed mainly positive affects in this group. Almost no negative affect was observed (mean 1.13, SD 0.20; median 1.0), while the positive affect (mean 3.22, SD 0.55; median 3.2) was high.
The developed observational coding system can be used and further developed in future studies on robot-assisted group activities in the nursing home context and potentially in other settings. Additionally, our pilot study indicates that cognitive and physical stimulation of older adults can be promoted by social robots in a group setting. This finding encourages future technological development and improvement of social robots and points to the potential of observational research to systematically evaluate such developments.
在老龄化社会中促进老年人的福祉需要新的解决方案。一种资源可能是使用社交机器人进行促进身体和认知刺激的团体活动。参与机器人辅助的团体活动可能有助于减缓老年人身体和认知能力的衰退。目前，我们对于老年人是否会与类人社交机器人一起参与团体活动以及他们在活动过程中是否会产生积极情绪的了解有限。这两者都是实现团体活动预期效果的必要前提条件。
我们的试点研究有两个目标。首先，我们旨在开发并试点一种用于机器人辅助团体活动的观察编码方案，因为养老院居民参与度和情绪的自我报告数据往往难以获取，且现有的观察工具确实存在局限性。其次，我们旨在调查瑞士德语区4家不同养老院中老年人在机器人辅助团体活动期间的参与度和情绪。
我们受现有工具启发，开发了一个观察系统，用于在机器人辅助团体活动期间对老年人的参与度和情绪进行结构化观察。在本研究中，来自瑞士4家不同养老院的85名老年居民参加了5次机器人辅助团体活动，并使用我们开发的系统对他们进行观察。数据以视频片段的形式收集，由两名评估者就参与度（注视方向、姿势以及身体表情和活动）和情绪（积极和消极情绪）进行评估。这两个变量均采用5分制评分。
我们的试点研究结果表明，使用所提出的观察编码方案可以可靠地评估老年人的参与度和情绪。大多数参与者积极参与机器人辅助团体活动（均值4.19，标准差0.47；中位数4.0）。用于衡量参与度的变量包括注视方向（均值4.65，标准差0.49；中位数5.0）、姿势和身体表情（均值4.03，标准差0.71；中位数4.0）以及活动（均值3.90，标准差0.65；中位数4.0）。此外，我们在该群体中主要观察到了积极情绪。几乎未观察到消极情绪（均值1.13，标准差0.20；中位数1.0），而积极情绪较高（均值3.22，标准差0.55；中位数3.2）。
所开发的观察编码系统可在未来关于养老院环境中机器人辅助团体活动的研究中使用并进一步完善，可能也适用于其他环境。此外，我们的试点研究表明，社交机器人在团体环境中可以促进老年人的认知和身体刺激。这一发现鼓励了未来社交机器人的技术开发和改进，并指出了观察性研究系统评估此类发展的潜力。
