Privender Saini

Individual differences in persuadability in the health promotion domain

This paper examines the behavioral consequences of individual differences in persuadability in the health promotion domain. We use a 7-item persuadability instrument to determine participants persuadability score. Based on this score two groups are created: the low and high persuadables. Subsequently, we present 2 studies that test the responses to health-related persuasive messages of both low and high persuadables. The results consistently show that high persuadables comply more to messages with a persuasive content as compared to a neutral message than low persuadables. Even more, both studies indicate lower compliance by low persuadables when persuasive messages are employed. Implications of this possible detrimental effect of the use of persuasive messages for low persuadables are discussed.

Home Stroke Rehabilitation for the Upper Limbs

Philips Research is developing and clinically testing solutions to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of rehabilitation. The Stroke Rehabilitation Exerciser supports patients and therapists in the implementation and execution of a personalized neurological motor exercise plan at home. It enables an efficient therapy planning for the medical professional and increases the training intensity for the patient. The stroke rehabilitation exerciser coaches the patient through a sequence of neurological motor exercises, which are prescribed by the physiotherapist and uploaded to a patient unit. A wireless inertial sensor system records the patients movements. The data is automatically analyzed for deviations from a personal movement target and patient and therapist are provided with adequate feedback.

Understanding user cognitions to guide the tailoring of persuasive technology-based physical activity interventions

The growing number of people with an inactive lifestyle emphasizes the need for highly persuasive physical activity interventions. Modern technological developments bring great promise for the realization of such large-scale persuasive behavior change interventions because they allow for user tailored interaction. For the effective tailoring of technology-based interventions, a profound understanding of the main variables underlying physical activity behavior is required. In this paper, we focus on three cognitive variables that have shown to be crucial for the adoption and maintenance of health behaviors: behavioral regulation, types of motives, and self-efficacy. In particular, we explore the relationship of these cognitive variables with actual levels of daily-life physical activity. Our study differs from related studies in two important ways. First, we consider the entire range of physical activities performed throughout the day while many studies focused on sports and or dedicated exercise. Second, we employ a wearable device for the objective measurement of daily physical activity levels rather than rely on self-report measures. Our results show that active individuals feel higher levels of self-determined behavioral regulation, experience stronger motives to be active (in particular for health and well-being related motives), and have higher levels of self-efficacy for daily-life physical activity than inactive individuals. We argue that tailored technology-based activity interventions should accommodate these cognitive variables and for inactive individuals, aim to gradually induce and internalize the cognitions already experienced by active individuals.

Self-setting of physical activity goals and effects on perceived difficulty, importance and competence

Goal setting can be a powerful method for persuading individuals to adopt an active lifestyle. In order for this to be the case, it is important to set concrete and challenging goals, and to strongly commit to them. In this study, we explored how people set goals for physical activity and how these goals were reflected in self-regulatory mechanisms to drive goal attainment. Our approach is novel in two ways: first, we used an unobtrusive wearable sensor to accurately measure physical activity throughout the day rather than rely on self-report, and second, we provided individuals with feedback about the contribution of their common daily activities (e.g., household activities) to their physical activity level. Our results showed that on the basis of this feedback, participants were able to indicate to what degree they intended to change their behavior. Nevertheless, they failed to set concrete goals that matched their intentions precisely. In particular, we observed that overall the set goals were in accordance with intentions (i.e., goals were set in the desired direction), but we saw a strong tendency to focus on enhancing vigorous activity at the cost of moderate intensity activity. This suggests that many individuals have intentions to change and goal setting support is needed to compose goals that accurately reflect these intentions. Technology-mediated interventions might be ideal to support individuals along that path.

Using availability heuristics in game design to introduce children to energy sufficient behaviours at home

Parents looking to foster more energy sufficient behaviours in their children struggle to have their child maintain these behaviours unsupervised. Our research indicates that in order for the child to maintain these behaviours, s/he must perceive him/herself as an eco conscious individual. We propose that increasing a childs ability to firstly recognise eco-friendly behaviours and secondly, recollect them, is likely to yield a greater affinity for habitual energy sufficient behaviours. This paper describes a first prototype game, whose interface employs availability heuristics and other persuasive design elements to achieve this goal.