Blog

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a PhD student in the UCL Knowledge Lab?

About a month ago, Professor Allison Littlejohn, who is the Director of the UCL Knowledge Lab, requested that I create a Blog with above captioned title. While there are a few overlaps with the information contained within the SensorAble blog that you’re now reading, many of my readers suggested that I also include a link to that separate publication here.

Within that blog you find out more about by position as a mid-career, distance-learning full-time PhD Researcher in UCL’s Knowledge Lab. Also included at that blog is information about my enrollment in the Institute of Education faculty and the Culture, Communication and Media department. You can also learn more about my membership with the Developmental Diversity Lab at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

You can learn more at www.davidruttenberg.com.

Q&A with David Ruttenberg

UCL’s Institute of Education recently conducted an interview with me and published the same within their websites along with a link to this blog. Within the article, I am hoping to bring attention, not only to my research, but to my richly deserving supervisors Prof Kaśka Porayska-PomstaDr Sarah White and Dr Joni Holmes.

I do hope that this promotion helps emphasize the importance and stature of the faculty at the IoE. It is an equally great “get” for the Centre for Doctoral Education, the Culture, Communication and Media department, the Knowledge Lab and UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, and in particular, the Development Diversity Lab. I enjoy promoting our Knowledge Lab Seminar Series too.

So do have a read and let me know your thoughts.

PPI PhD Starter Grant

Overview

The National Institute for Health Research–UK’s largest funder of health and care research–recently awarded one of two grants to David Ruttenberg to carry out Patient Public Involvement (PPI) research for the SensorAble project on Adaptive Wearable Appropriateness as an Autistic intervention. This award is made possible through the generous support of the University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre.

About the research

90% of autistic adults report that sensory issues cause significant barriers at school/work. Wearable technologies offer the possibility to monitor environments and adjust user-experiences. A PPI co-produced with individuals that incorporates their lived-experiences may well translate into a prototype aiming to squelch unwanted sensory-stimuli and deliver early-warning/alerts of distracting and anxiety-producing events.

“By targeting an often-neglected group, this project contrasts with other interventions that focus on ‘fixing’ socio-communicative difficulties by ‘teaching’ individuals to conform to their surroundings,” Ruttenberg reports. “Instead, my study aims to empower users with customized supports for their particular needs and may increase their comfort, productivity and autonomy.”

Find out more

You can learn more about that SensorAble project here at the project website.

For more information, you may also wish to contact David.

Updated: 14 March 2020

Happy New Year!

While SensorAble research commenced with my MPhil/PhD enrollment on 3 June 2019, this marks the first official blog post for my project. In case you missed the primary reasoning and rationale behind SensorAble, here’s a quick primer on what the research is all about.

SensorAble (\ˈsen-sȯr-əbəl — or alt. — \sen-ˈsȯr-əbəl) is a multi-disciplinary MPhil/PhD Research Project. It fulfils a gap in scholarly knowledge regarding the exploration, design, application and testing of purpose-built wearable technologies that employ artificial intelligence for cognitive enhancement for those diagnosed with autism, by increasing their attentional focus and quality of life and through de-emphasizing anxiety-inducing environmental distractions and over-stimulation.

SensorAble aims to distinguish itself from prior cognate studies in three respects. Prior research uses sensory technology that “interprets socioaffective cues such as tone of voice or facial expression to systematize and understand social interaction” (Kaliouby & Picard, 2006, 243). In contrast, SensorAble’s goal supports users by means of tuned awarenessand customized intervention through alerts prior to the onset of anxiety, distraction or loss of focus by:

  • monitoring physiological responses and environmental disruptions and comparing them to a known and growing catalogue of individually learned distractions (e.g., those visual and aural sensations that create anxiety unique to each user); 
  • adjusting the user experience by diminishing or eliminating visual disturbances, head sway (pupillary observation or inertial monitoring) and offending sounds (noise-cancelling, spatial focusing and frequency/amplitude corrections); and,
  • providing notification or anticipatory feedback through vibration and alerts (haptics) that aim to reduce or eliminate anxiety before onset. 
Kaliouby, R. E., & Picard, A. R. (2006). Affective Computing and Autism.