Digital Leisure: An Opportunity for Intergenerational Well-Being in Times of Pandemic?

Leisure activities shared by grandparents and grandchildren provide important benefits. The health and humanitarian crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has made it necessary to use digital tools to alleviate the lack of contact between adults and children. This paper had as its aim to identify the digital leisure shared by grandparents and their pre-adolescent grandchildren (10-12 years old) before and during the pandemic, as well as its contribution to intergenerational well-being from a holistic paradigm, ultimately aiming to determine whether that digital leisure constitutes an experience of human development for young and old people alike. The sample was made up of 153 grandparents of 10-to-12-year-old children living in the north of Spain. Alongside the use of an ad hoc questionnaire, descriptive and inferential analyses were carried out. Most intergenerational leisure activities ceased to be performed during the lockdown, except for those that could be carried out remotely, thanks to information and communication technologies, which ensured the continuity of social and family interactions. Technological connectivity between generations provided greater support to communication and meaningful relationships, additionally facilitating active aging processes.

Speed Dating with Voice User Interfaces: Understanding How Families Interact and Perceive Voice User Interfaces in a Group Setting

As voice-user interfaces (VUIs), such as smart speakers like Amazon Alexa or social robots like Jibo, enter multi-user environments like our homes, it is critical to understand how group members perceive and interact with these devices. VUIs engage socially with users, leveraging multi-modal cues including speech, graphics, expressive sounds, and movement. The combination of these cues can affect how users perceive and interact with these devices. Through a set of three elicitation studies, we explore family interactions (N = 34 families, 92 participants, ages 4–69) with three commercially available VUIs with varying levels of social embodiment. The motivation for these three studies began when researchers noticed that families interacted differently with three agents when familiarizing themselves with the agents and, therefore, we sought to further investigate this trend in three subsequent studies designed as a conceptional replication study. Each study included three activities to examine participants’ interactions with and perceptions of the three VUIS in each study, including an agent exploration activity, perceived personality activity, and user experience ranking activity. Consistent for each study, participants interacted significantly more with an agent with a higher degree of social embodiment, i.e., a social robot such as Jibo, and perceived the agent as more trustworthy, having higher emotional engagement, and having higher companionship. There were some nuances in interaction and perception with different brands and types of smart speakers, i.e., Google Home versus Amazon Echo, or Amazon Show versus Amazon Echo Spot between the studies. In the last study, a behavioral analysis was conducted to investigate interactions between family members and with the VUIs, revealing that participants interacted more with the social robot and interacted more with their family members around the interactions with the social robot. This paper explores these findings and elaborates upon how these findings can direct future VUI development for group settings, especially in familial settings.

Positive Family Environment, General Distress, Subjective Well-Being, and Academic Engagement among High School Students Before and During the COVID-19 Outbreak

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the family dynamics of most people worldwide as well as the mode in which students take classes. The impact of such changes on students’ well-being, academic engagement, and general distress remains unknown. Therefore, this study aims to test the structural relations among positive family environment (a measure of Positive Home-Based Parent Involvement [HBI]), subjective well-being (SWB), general distress, and academic engagement, focusing on Mexican high school students. A longitudinal study was conducted covering two time points: before (T1) and during (T2) the COVID-19 outbreak. A sample of 502 students answered questionnaires in T1 whereas 111 did so in T2. Analyses were conducted using Mplus software. Principal results showed that the positive and significant association between positive family environment and SWB did not substantially change from T1 to T2, whereas the relation between positive family environment and academic engagement became stronger. Data revealed that a positive family environment can play an important role in promoting academic engagement among adolescent students despite the risks brought about by sanitary lockdowns and the increase of family interactions. Results are discussed highlighting the importance of positive family environments and HBI on academic outcomes for Mexican high school students.

HiC-TE: a computational pipeline for Hi-C data analysis shows a possible role of repeat family interactions in the genome 3D organization

The role of repetitive DNA in the 3D organization of the interphase nucleus in plant cells is a subject of intensive study. High-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C) is a sequencing-based method detecting the proximity of DNA segments in nuclei. We combined Hi-C data, plant reference genome data and tools for the characterization of genomic repeats to build a Nextflow pipeline identifying and quantifying the contacts of specific repeats revealing the preferential homotypic interactions of ribosomal DNA, DNA transposons and some LTR retrotransposon families. We provide a novel way to analyze the organization of repetitive elements in the 3D nucleus.

Maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany: A longitudinal approach

The study discusses the perspectives of long-term maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany. Based on data from a longitudinal study (2014-2018) we investigated changes in the sociolinguistic situation of 19 adolescent heritage speakers and in their proficiency in Russian. The aim was to investigate whether changes in the participants sociolinguistic situation are reflected in their knowledge of Russian. Data on the sociolinguistic situation were collected via an extensive questionnaire that the participants had to fill out once a year. Language proficiency was measured by experimental tasks targeting different linguistic domains. For the current paper, we used data from the longitudinal measurement of lexical and grammatical proficiency. The results revealed that the participants exposure to Russian input is decreasing in several domains over time, especially concerning media consumption and personal visits to the homeland. Russian is increasingly restricted to interactions with parents, and to educational settings (classes in Russian as a foreign or heritage language). Regarding language attitudes, our participants explicitly consider Russian important primarily for family interactions and cultural factors, but less with regard to career goals. Nevertheless, there was a positive trend in lexical and grammatical proficiency. We interpret these findings as a result of the prolonged exposure to heritage language instruction which leads to a stabilized proficiency in Russian. Given the institutional support and the size of the community, we hypothesize that the perspectives for long-term maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany are better than for Russian heritage speaker communities in other countries.

“Coronavirus Changed the Rules on Everything”: Parent Perspectives on How the COVID-19 Pandemic Influenced Family Routines, Relationships and Technology Use in Families with Infants

This study explores how the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced family routines, relationships and technology use (smartphones and tablet computers) among families with infants. Infancy is known to be an important period for attachment security and future child development, and a time of being susceptible to changes within and outside of the family unit. A qualitative design using convenience sampling was employed. A total of 30 mothers in Perth, Western Australia participated in semi-structured interviews by audio or video call. All mothers were parents of infants aged 9 to 15 months old. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, and data were analysed using thematic analysis to code and identify themes in an inductive manner. Families described staying home and stopping all external activities. Three themes relating to family interactions and wellbeing were found: enhanced family relationships; prompted reflection on family schedules; and increased parental stress. Two themes related to family device use were found: enabled connections to be maintained; and source of disrupted interactions within the family unit. Overall, participants described more advantages than downsides of device use during COVID-19. Findings will be of value in providing useful information for families, health professionals and government advisors for use during future pandemic-related restrictions.

Development and Psychometric Testing of Coding Scheme for Dementia Family Communication Using Video Observation

Understanding communication behaviors between persons living with dementia and family caregivers is essential for meaningful social interaction and decrease problematic behaviors and caregiving burden. The purpose of this study was to develop and test the psychometric properties of a coding scheme for dementia care interactions. The coding scheme items were developed from literature and expert review, and the pilot testing on 16 video-recorded interactions. A secondary analysis was conducted using 77 videos from 21 dyads of dementia family interactions naturally occurred in the participant’s home. The final coding scheme consists of 11 codes for persons living with dementia (6 nonverbal and 5 verbal) and 12 codes for family caregivers (7 nonverbal and 5 verbal). Content validity was excellent (I-CVI = .93, S-CVI/UA = .71, S-CVI/Ave = .93 with 6 experts). Inter-item correlation was acceptable for both caregiver codes (positive nonverbal = .21, positive verbal = .15, negative nonverbal = .36, negative verbal = .29), and patient codes (positive nonverbal = .13, positive verbal = .27, negative nonverbal = .15, negative verbal = .18). Intra-rater reliability (Cohen’s Kappa = .83, percentage of agreement = 83.88%) and inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s Kappa = .81, percentage of agreement = 81.75%) were excellent. Findings suggest the preliminary psychometric properties of the newly developed coding scheme to assess dyadic interactions of persons living with dementia and their informal caregiver in-home care situations. Future testing of the coding scheme for application in communication interventions to improve quality social interaction in dementia care is discussed.

Experiences of Strokes’ Caregiver in Maluku Province: A Qualitative Study

Introduction:Patients with stroke are dependent on their family to relieve their physical and emotional needs after discharge form the hospital. The family plays an important role in caring for them, which is a stressful task for the caregivers. This study aimed at investigating the experiences of caregivers of patients with stroke.Method: This is qualitative study (descriptive phenomenology), in which the participants included seven caregivers of stroke patients. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was performed based on Colaizzi.Result: The results in the study were summarized in three main categories: anxiety (tension and stress, concern about economic future), care consequences (fatigue, reduced family interactions), and neglected needs (psychological needs educational needs)Conclusion: According to the purpose of the study and its implications, it is concluded that nurses and physicians should pay more attention to the needs and concerns of patients and their caregivers and try to resolve them with regard to the consequences of the disease.

Developmental Trajectories of Adult Romantic Attachment: Assessing the Influence of Observed Interactions With Family of Origin

The present study evaluates longitudinal trajectories of adult romantic attachment during adulthood using latent growth curve modeling. We also tested how observed family interactions were related to trajectories of attachment-related anxiety and avoidance from ages 25 to 31 years (on average). Stability coefficients for attachment variables across 6 years were around .50. Growth modeling results suggested that people tend to become less anxious as they mature into adulthood and that there were individual differences in changes during this period. Although family interaction quality in the adolescent years predicted levels of romantic attachment anxiety and avoidance in young adulthood, this association did not extend to changes in attachment between the ages of 25–31 years. Overall, it seems that attachment variables demonstrate some degree of consistency over time even as the average trend is for declines in anxiety. Moreover, adolescent interactions with parents were not strong predictors of changes in attachment during adulthood. This is consistent with the view that family relationships during adolescence are associated more strongly with the stable components of attachment rather than dynamic aspects in adulthood.