Embraced Separation: Exploring methods of breath attunement in speculative infant swings

This paper explores a speculative design for an infant swing based on breath attunement. There are challenges for working parents to juggle, such as working from home and taking care of an infant, especially when infants want to be physically close to the parent. This design explores how a swing can be adaptable to subtle, dynamic changes in the parent that can soothe the infant while allowing the parent to be more hands-free. These dynamic changes include the use of breath sensors on the parent to change the rhythm of the swing, while also creating shifting amplifications of environmental sounds, as though they were being carried by the parent through the home. This work particularly explores qualities of movement and rhythm as key components of comfort for infants in their parent’s arms. Results of this paper include design sketches and a usability evaluation of a smartphone interface, as a speculative approach to designing embodied interactions between parent-child relationships.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Olaoluwa Oyedokun

Kristin Carlson

Annie Sungkajun

Conference

Publication date: July 2021

Publication date (Print): July 2021

Pages: 163-170

Affiliations

[0001]Illinois State University

USA

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVA2021.27

SO-VID: 26ed96b3-74eb-4dee-8de0-09cd4bf6793c

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of EVA London 2021

Conference acronym: EVA 2021

Conference number:

Conference location: London

Conference date: 5th July – 9th July 2021

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: AI and the Arts: Artificial Imagination

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2021.27

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] F. Baker, & E. Mackinlay (2006) Sing, Soothe and Sleep: A Lullaby Education Programme for First-Time Mothers. British Journal of Music Education, 23(2), 147–160.

[2] S. Balogun and O. Osawe (2021) [Personal Communication]. Interviews via phone call. February 21, 2021.

[3] S. Balzarotti, L. Piccini, G. Andreoni, & R. Ciceri (2014) “I Know That You Know How I Feel”: Behavioral and Physiological Signals Demonstrate Emotional Attunement While Interacting with a Computer Simulating Emotional Intelligence. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 38(3), 283–299.

[4] M. H. Bornstein (2013) Mother-infant attunement: A multilevel approach via body, brain, and behavior. In The infant mind: Origins of the social brain, pp. 266–298. The Guilford Press.

[5] G. Corness, K. Carlson, & T. Schiphorst (2011) Audience empathy: A phenomenological method for mediated performance. Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition, pp. 127–136.

[6] S. Fdili Alaoui, T. Schiphorst, S. Cuykendall, K. Carlson, K. Studd, & K. Bradley (2015) Strategies for Embodied Design: The Value and Challenges of Observing Movement. Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition, pp. 121–130.

[7] W. L. Haft, & A. Slade (1989) Affect Attunement and Maternal Attachment: A Pilot Study. Infant Mental Health Journal, 10(3), pp. 157–172.

[8] Y. Harrison (2004) The relationship between daytime exposure to light and night‐time sleep in 6– 12‐week‐old infants. Journal of Sleep Research, 13: pp. 345-352.

[9] HealthySleep (2007) Under the Brain’s Control. http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/science/how/neurophysiology (Retrieved 15 March 2021).

[10] M. Heidegger (1977) Basic Writings. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

[11] J.P. Lecanuet (1996) ‘Prenatal auditory experience’, in I. Deliège & J. Sloboda (Eds), Musical Beginnings: Origins and Development of Musical Competence, pp. 3-25. New York: Oxford University Press.

[12] M. Legerstee, D. W. Haley, & M. H. Bornstein (2013) The Infant Mind: Origins of the Social Brain. Guilford Publications.

[13] L. Lipari (2014) Listening, Thinking, Being: Toward an Ethics of Attunement. Penn State Press.

[14] D. J. Siegel (2007) The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology). W.W. Norton & Company.

[15] Y. Liu, D. Zheng, T. Lin, X. Liu, D. Wang, & F. Hopfgartner (2018) Smart Crib Control System Based on Sentiment Analysis. 2018 IEEE 16th Intl Conf on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, 16th Intl Conf on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, 4th Intl Conf on Big Data Intelligence and Computing and Cyber Science and Technology Congress, pp. 222–229.

[16] National Institute of General Medical Sciences (2021) Circadian Rhythms. https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/circadian-rhythms.aspx (Retrieved 15 March 2021).

[17] Owlet. 2017. Owlet Smart Sock; Baby Care. Owlet Care. http://www.owletcare.com/ (Retrieved March 15, 2021)

[18] J. Provasi, D. I. Anderson, & M. Barbu-Roth (2014). Rhythm perception, production, and synchronization during the perinatal period. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1048.

[19] A. Quito 2016. This MIT Media Lab-engineered “SMART Crib” is designed to quiet a crying baby in under a minute. https://qz.com/815858/snoo-a-smart-crib-that-instantly-quiets-crying-babies-designed-by-harvey-karp-yves-behar-and-deb-roy/ (Retrieved March 14, 2021).

[20] SNOO-Happiest baby,͇ Happiest Baby (2018) [Website] https://www.happiestbaby.com/pages/snoo. (Retrieved March 14, 2021).

[21] K. A. Thomas, R. L. Burr, & S. Spieker (2016). Light and maternal influence in the entrainment of activity circadian rhythm in infants 4-12 weeks of age. Sleep and biological rhythms, 14(3), 249–255. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41105-015-0046-2

[22] S. Toto (2009) The Suima crib is the world’s first fully automatic baby bed: https://techcrunch.com/2009/02/02/the-suima-crib-is-the-worlds-first-fully-automatic-baby-bed/ February 2, 2009. (Retrieved March 15, 2021).

[23] H. Westerkamp (n.d.) Writings by Hildegard Westerkamp. [Website] http://www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca/writings/writingsby/index.php (Retrieved March 17, 2021).

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