Development of a Robot-Assisted Activity Program for Elderly People Incorporating Reading Aloud and Arithmetic Calculation

Virtual Coaches for Older Adults’ Wellbeing: A Systematic Review

“…Randomized trial [2,3,11,48,55,56] Pilot study [12,13,14,21,26,31,35,39,40,43,44,45,46,47,53,54] Observational study [28,30] Preliminary studies for assessing usability or codesign choices [1,5,9,15,18,20,23,24,27,34,49] System proposal (no user study) [6,16,17,19,22,25,29,36,52] Study protocol [4,7,8,32,33,41] Field study [10,…”

“…Hence, because of a limited understanding of how to design and implement e-coaching interventions for older adults, as well as limited evidence regarding their effectiveness in promoting healthrelated outcomes, we refrained from excluding further papers and kept all 56 for our analysis. In fact, among the 56 papers selected as eligible for the analysis, five reported results of randomized controlled trials [2,3,11,55,56] and one study was a clinical trial [48], six reported protocols for future randomized trials [4, 7, 8, 32, 33, 41], 16 presented results of pilot studies [12,13,14,21,26,31,35,39,40,43,44,45,46,47,53,54] and two were observational studies [28,30], while [38] presented a pre-post intervention study. Eleven presented the results of a preliminary assessment of a system in terms of usability or co-design choice [1,5,9,15,18,20,23,24,27,34,49], four [10,42,50,51] presented a field study for deriving the requirements of a coaching system, and nine presented only a proposal of a coaching system or an architectural implementation, without any user study [6,…”

“…These roles define the main characteristics that an e-coach should present: teaching the user new skills, providing a sense of companionship by establishing an effective relationship based on trust, and providing relevant and accurate information that the user asks for. Another paper [54] provided a specific definition limited to their work, which refers to e-coaches as robots that are supposed to "facilitate learning and improve cognitive functioning". In this definition, it is possible to find only the characteristics linked to the e-coach role of a mentor.…”

“…The types of interventions that were included in this review are: video game training targeting multiple cognitive domains simultaneously (i.e., multi-domain focus within the cognitive domain) [7], productive intellectual engagement [17], as well as video game training without an explicit multi-domain focus [50 and 51]. The main target of the studies identified in this review was general cognitive functioning (e.g., memory, prospective memory, executive functioning) and everyday cognition [7,9,10,17,50,51,54] or speech abilities [17], as well as delaying the onset of dementia [45]. The main coaching activities incorporated in the papers reviewed are: virtual tasks that mimic everyday tasks [11], tasks performed at the computer [9], quizzes [10], reminders of daily activities [10], story-telling and conversations to enhance speech and memory ability [17], memory games [24], interactive video games [45], general mental activity engagement [50,51], and reading/math exercises as activities intended to enhance overall cognitive functioning [54].…”

“…In recent years, researchers have begun to take the emotional element of coaching into consideration while providing frameworks for e-coaching. Emotional activity or aspects of emotion recognition were included as a coaching domain in 11 of the 56 studies found in this review [9,10,13,16,21,41,42,47,50,53,54]. A number of these studies use fairly basic conceptualizations of emotions, although there seem to be significant differences across e-coaching systems.…”