title: Augmenting Autobiographical Memory: An Approach Based on Cognitive Psychology

authors: Schweer, Andrea

subjects: autobiographical memory

abstract: This thesis investigates how an interactive software system can support a person in remembering their past experiences and information related to these experiences. It proposes design recommendations for augmented autobiographical memory systems derived from Cognitive Psychology research into human memory – a perspective missing from prior work. Based on these recommendations, a conceptual design of an augmented autobiographical memory system is developed that aims to support users in retrieving cues and factual information related to experiences as well as in reconstructing those experiences. The retrieval aspects of this design are operationalised in an interactive software system called the Digital Parrot. Three important factors in the design and implementation are the context of an experience, semantic information about items in the system and associations between items. Two user studies evaluated the design and implementation of the Digital Parrot. The first study focused on the system's usability. It showed that the participants could use the Digital Parrot to accurately answer questions about an example memory data set and revealed a number of usability issues in the Digital Parrot's user interface. The second study embodied a novel approach to evaluating systems of this type and tested how an improved version of the Digital Parrot supported the participants in remembering experiences after an extended time period of two years. The study found that the Digital Parrot allowed the participants to answer questions about their own past experiences more completely and more correctly than unaided memory and that it allowed them to answer questions for which the participants' established strategies to counteract memory failures were likely to be unsuccessful. In the studies, associations between items were the most helpful factor for accessing memory-related information. The inclusion of semantic information was found to be promising especially in combination with textual search. Context was used to access information by the participants in both studies less often than expected, which suggests the need for further research. Identifying how to appropriately augment autobiographical memory is an important goal given the increasing volume of information to which users are exposed. This thesis contributes to achievement of this goal by stating the problem in Cognitive Psychology terms and by making design recommendations for augmented autobiographical memory systems. The recommendations are confirmed by the design and implementation of such a system and by empirical evaluations using an evaluation method appropriate for the field.

text: Augmenting Autobiographical Memory: An Approach Based on Cognitive Psychology This thesis investigates how an interactive software system can support a person in remembering their past experiences and information related to these experiences. It proposes design recommendations for augmented autobiographical memory systems derived from Cognitive Psychology research into human memory – a perspective missing from prior work. Based on these recommendations, a conceptual design of an augmented autobiographical memory system is developed that aims to support users in retrieving cues and factual information related to experiences as well as in reconstructing those experiences. The retrieval aspects of this design are operationalised in an interactive software system called the Digital Parrot. Three important factors in the design and implementation are the context of an experience, semantic information about items in the system and associations between items. Two user studies evaluated the design and implementation of the Digital Parrot. The first study focused on the system's usability. It showed that the participants could use the Digital Parrot to accurately answer questions about an example memory data set and revealed a number of usability issues in the Digital Parrot's user interface. The second study embodied a novel approach to evaluating systems of this type and tested how an improved version of the Digital Parrot supported the participants in remembering experiences after an extended time period of two years. The study found that the Digital Parrot allowed the participants to answer questions about their own past experiences more completely and more correctly than unaided memory and that it allowed them to answer questions for which the participants' established strategies to counteract memory failures were likely to be unsuccessful. In the studies, associations between items were the most helpful factor for accessing memory-related information. The inclusion of semantic information was found to be promising especially in combination with textual search. Context was used to access information by the participants in both studies less often than expected, which suggests the need for further research. Identifying how to appropriately augment autobiographical memory is an important goal given the increasing volume of information to which users are exposed. This thesis contributes to achievement of this goal by stating the problem in Cognitive Psychology terms and by making design recommendations for augmented autobiographical memory systems. The recommendations are confirmed by the design and implementation of such a system and by empirical evaluations using an evaluation method appropriate for the field.

year: 2011

title: Erased: Representations of women's bodies in chronic invisible pain

authors: May, Melody Julianne

subjects: Chronic pain

abstract: Stories of pain stretch metaphors and similes. They infuse verbs into the narrative—it stabs, it burns, it aches—in a desperate attempt to describe what the pain is doing in the body. There is a critical need for accurate communication, either to family and friends, or more importantly, to healthcare professionals. Yet often this crucial connection fails. Honesty about chronic illness and related invisible disability is repeatedly met with confusion, dismissal, or even disdain. So where is the problem? Where is the disconnection occurring? Elaine Scarry argues that pain’s personal and life-destroying nature is nearly impossible to communicate, because its very existence within the body destroys the language needed to express it. This is true. Often pain dismantles our whole world.  We are left only with a guttural scream or the expletive. However, Joanna Bourke argues, ‘people in pain are often highly creative in expressing their suffering’.  We use all the words we need to clearly communicate. This word communicate is important. It has three elements: a sufferer, a witness, and a gap between them. A strange distortion often occurs within this gap; it is polluted with static. While I will be considering the difficulty sometimes experienced in expressing the reality of pain in our bodies, much of this thesis interrogates the gap. 
My research focuses on women in chronic pain because women are four times more likely to have a chronic illness and seven times more likely to have their symptoms misdiagnosed or dismissed as emotional and therefore unreal. This bias is pervasive and needs interrogation. Storytellers are uniquely positioned to provide a voice for the voiceless while simultaneously challenging what is considered normal or ideal. I am concerned with the ideals that create expectations about what “healthy” and “ill” mean and even what it means to be a “normal” woman. These expectations all converge on the body and the lived experience of the chronically ill woman, labelling her at best a failure and at worst a liar. 
The questions I am asking, then, are: How can we communicate chronic pain? How can we help others to listen to what we are communicating? What needs to change within our cultural belief systems in order to understand women with chronic pain? What within our social structures is excluding these women? How is this isolation compounding the suffering of women in chronic pain? And, finally, how can storytelling help address these issues?
My research is specifically focused on contemporary narratives of chronic pain. This is because I am interested in representations that reflect current attitudes and social structures. I examine these texts not only for evidence of authentic representation of the lived experience of pain but also for ways in which the suffering of these women can be alleviated. While I cannot cure chronic illness, I can offer insight into the constructed cultural beliefs that can be dismantled to make a more inclusive world. I believe art has the power to do this, and I believe we need more authentic stories to represent women suffering from chronic illness. 
However, stories of chronic pain and disability are often chaotic. Unlike the familiar cure-or-death endings of traditional disease narratives, these stories have no resolution, and audiences often reject them. When research participants are told a chaotic story of pain and disability, they rewrite it, so desperate is their need to erase the suffering. They long for a hero who overcomes all adversity. This means that illness stories often set impossible standards, isolating women in pain even further.
Therefore, my research includes a creative component. I have written a novel that embeds the chaos of chronic pain within a quest narrative, to anchor readers to familiar structure, and yet offers an authentic voice for those who need representation. There are two separate narratives. The first belongs to Amanda, who has been summoned by the universe (or her cell-phone, she isn’t sure) to find Kelly Wisely and wish her a happy birthday. The second belongs to Kelly Wisely herself, whose pain has thrown her narrative and her life into chaos—her narrative no longer obeys time, nor can it hold any real structure. Her life is in fragments.

text: Erased: Representations of women's bodies in chronic invisible pain Stories of pain stretch metaphors and similes. They infuse verbs into the narrative—it stabs, it burns, it aches—in a desperate attempt to describe what the pain is doing in the body. There is a critical need for accurate communication, either to family and friends, or more importantly, to healthcare professionals. Yet often this crucial connection fails. Honesty about chronic illness and related invisible disability is repeatedly met with confusion, dismissal, or even disdain. So where is the problem? Where is the disconnection occurring? Elaine Scarry argues that pain’s personal and life-destroying nature is nearly impossible to communicate, because its very existence within the body destroys the language needed to express it. This is true. Often pain dismantles our whole world.  We are left only with a guttural scream or the expletive. However, Joanna Bourke argues, ‘people in pain are often highly creative in expressing their suffering’.  We use all the words we need to clearly communicate. This word communicate is important. It has three elements: a sufferer, a witness, and a gap between them. A strange distortion often occurs within this gap; it is polluted with static. While I will be considering the difficulty sometimes experienced in expressing the reality of pain in our bodies, much of this thesis interrogates the gap. 
My research focuses on women in chronic pain because women are four times more likely to have a chronic illness and seven times more likely to have their symptoms misdiagnosed or dismissed as emotional and therefore unreal. This bias is pervasive and needs interrogation. Storytellers are uniquely positioned to provide a voice for the voiceless while simultaneously challenging what is considered normal or ideal. I am concerned with the ideals that create expectations about what “healthy” and “ill” mean and even what it means to be a “normal” woman. These expectations all converge on the body and the lived experience of the chronically ill woman, labelling her at best a failure and at worst a liar. 
The questions I am asking, then, are: How can we communicate chronic pain? How can we help others to listen to what we are communicating? What needs to change within our cultural belief systems in order to understand women with chronic pain? What within our social structures is excluding these women? How is this isolation compounding the suffering of women in chronic pain? And, finally, how can storytelling help address these issues?
My research is specifically focused on contemporary narratives of chronic pain. This is because I am interested in representations that reflect current attitudes and social structures. I examine these texts not only for evidence of authentic representation of the lived experience of pain but also for ways in which the suffering of these women can be alleviated. While I cannot cure chronic illness, I can offer insight into the constructed cultural beliefs that can be dismantled to make a more inclusive world. I believe art has the power to do this, and I believe we need more authentic stories to represent women suffering from chronic illness. 
However, stories of chronic pain and disability are often chaotic. Unlike the familiar cure-or-death endings of traditional disease narratives, these stories have no resolution, and audiences often reject them. When research participants are told a chaotic story of pain and disability, they rewrite it, so desperate is their need to erase the suffering. They long for a hero who overcomes all adversity. This means that illness stories often set impossible standards, isolating women in pain even further.
Therefore, my research includes a creative component. I have written a novel that embeds the chaos of chronic pain within a quest narrative, to anchor readers to familiar structure, and yet offers an authentic voice for those who need representation. There are two separate narratives. The first belongs to Amanda, who has been summoned by the universe (or her cell-phone, she isn’t sure) to find Kelly Wisely and wish her a happy birthday. The second belongs to Kelly Wisely herself, whose pain has thrown her narrative and her life into chaos—her narrative no longer obeys time, nor can it hold any real structure. Her life is in fragments.

year: 2022

title: Ngā tohu o te taiao: Observing signs of the natural world to identify seastar over-abundance as a detriment to shellfish survival in Ōhiwa Harbour, Aotearoa New Zealand

authors: Paul-Burke, Kura

subjects: Tohu

abstract: Māori understandings and experiences of the natural world encompass not only what is known but how it is known, and the intergenerational connectedness of that knowledge with the environments from which it is derived. Ngā tohu o te taiao (hereafter ‘tohu’), or the cultural and environmental signs and indicators of the natural world, are widely used by kaitiaki or local practitioners to identify trends or changes in the state or health of marine taonga (culturally important) species and their associated environments (Paul-Burke, 2017). Māori worldviews position humans within nature and focus on ways in which cultural understandings and intergenerational connections between people and their bio-physical contexts assist in the retention and protection of biodiversity and ecologically sustainable ecosystems (Lyver et al., 2016). Tohu are a fundamental expression of kaitiakitanga or active guardianship and are based on the primal instinct of survival and recognising that in order to survive one must pay attention to the natural signs and signals thoughtfully, so as to manage our mahinga kai (food harvesting area) and ourselves into the future (Paul-Burke et al., 2020). This article considers the example of the over-abundant eleven-armed seastar (pātangaroa, Coscinasterias muricata; hereafter ‘seastar’) predating on culturally and ecologically important shellfish populations in a traditional mahinga kai of Ōhiwa Harbour in the Bay of Plenty region of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The over-abundance of seastars was considered a contemporary tohu of a degrading harbour. It was deemed imperative by iwi (tribe) members that a trial using quantitative methods to investigate predation pressure of seastars on the green-lipped mussel (kuku or kūtai, Perna canaliculus) population be conducted in the harbour. Between September 2018 and February 2019 field trials were undertaken that prioritised mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) alongside marine science to assist with a better understanding of the degrading harbour. It was hoped that the research would help and promote recovery, in particular but not limited to, the once abundant but now severely reduced mussel reefs in the soft-mud-bottomed harbour.

text: Ngā tohu o te taiao: Observing signs of the natural world to identify seastar over-abundance as a detriment to shellfish survival in Ōhiwa Harbour, Aotearoa New Zealand Māori understandings and experiences of the natural world encompass not only what is known but how it is known, and the intergenerational connectedness of that knowledge with the environments from which it is derived. Ngā tohu o te taiao (hereafter ‘tohu’), or the cultural and environmental signs and indicators of the natural world, are widely used by kaitiaki or local practitioners to identify trends or changes in the state or health of marine taonga (culturally important) species and their associated environments (Paul-Burke, 2017). Māori worldviews position humans within nature and focus on ways in which cultural understandings and intergenerational connections between people and their bio-physical contexts assist in the retention and protection of biodiversity and ecologically sustainable ecosystems (Lyver et al., 2016). Tohu are a fundamental expression of kaitiakitanga or active guardianship and are based on the primal instinct of survival and recognising that in order to survive one must pay attention to the natural signs and signals thoughtfully, so as to manage our mahinga kai (food harvesting area) and ourselves into the future (Paul-Burke et al., 2020). This article considers the example of the over-abundant eleven-armed seastar (pātangaroa, Coscinasterias muricata; hereafter ‘seastar’) predating on culturally and ecologically important shellfish populations in a traditional mahinga kai of Ōhiwa Harbour in the Bay of Plenty region of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The over-abundance of seastars was considered a contemporary tohu of a degrading harbour. It was deemed imperative by iwi (tribe) members that a trial using quantitative methods to investigate predation pressure of seastars on the green-lipped mussel (kuku or kūtai, Perna canaliculus) population be conducted in the harbour. Between September 2018 and February 2019 field trials were undertaken that prioritised mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) alongside marine science to assist with a better understanding of the degrading harbour. It was hoped that the research would help and promote recovery, in particular but not limited to, the once abundant but now severely reduced mussel reefs in the soft-mud-bottomed harbour.

year: 2022-03-28