Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies
Date Submitted: May 1, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: May 1, 2023 - Jun 26, 2023
Date Accepted: Nov 15, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
ENGAGEMENT AND MOOD DURING ROBOT-ASSISTED GROUP ACTIVITIES: AN OBSERVATIONAL PILOT STUDY IN FOUR NURSING HOMES
ABSTRACT
Background:
Promoting the well-being of elderly people 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. When elderly people engage in a robot-assisted group activity, this may help to slow down physical and cognitive decline. Currently, our knowledge is limited on whether elderly people engage in group activities with humanlike social robots and whether they experience positive affect while doing so. Both are necessary preconditions to achieve the intended effects of a group activity.
Objective:
Our pilot study had two aims: First, the development and piloting of an observational coding scheme for robot-assisted group activities since self-report data of nursing home residents on engagement and mood is often difficult to obtain and existing observations instrument had some limitations. Second, the investigation of elderly peoples’ engagement in and mood during robot-assisted group activities in four different care homes.
Methods:
For a structured observation of engagement and mood during a robot-assisted group activity an observation system was developed. 85 elderly residents participated in five robot-assisted group activity sessions and were observed.
Results:
The results of our pilot study during show that: Firstly, engagement and mood can reliably be assessed using the proposed observational coding scheme. Secondly, most participants actively engaged in the robot-assisted group activities, and we observed mainly positive affect in the group.
Conclusions:
The observational coding system can be used and further developed in future studies on robot-assisted group activities in the nursing home context and potentially also in other settings. Additionally, this pilot study indicates that cognitive and physical stimulation of elderly can be promoted by social robots in a group setting. This encourages future technological development and improvement of social robots and points to the potential of observational research to systematically evaluate such developments.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.