The use of ecologically oriented approaches with virtual reality (VR) depicting instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) is a promising approach for interventions on acquired brain injuries. However, the results of such an approach on dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are still lacking. This research reports on a pilot randomized controlled trial that aimed to explore the effect of a cognitive stimulation reproducing several IADL in VR on people with mild-to-moderate dementia caused by AD. Patients were recruited from residential care homes of Santa Casa da Misericórdia da Amadora (SCMA), which is a relevant nonprofit social and healthcare provider in Portugal. This intervention lasted two months, with a total of 10 sessions (two sessions/week). A neuropsychological assessment was carried out at the baseline and follow-up using established neuropsychological instruments for assessing memory, attention, and executive functions. The sample consisted of 17 patients of both genders randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The preliminary results suggested an improvement in overall cognitive function in the experimental group, with an effect size corresponding to a large effect in global cognition, which suggests that this approach is effective for neurocognitive stimulation in older adults with dementia, contributing to maintaining cognitive function in AD.

The global COVID-19 pandemic crisis has caused an unprecedented impact on most areas of people’s lives. Thus, framed within the scope of Existential Positive Psychology (PP2.0), this study aimed at assessing the psychological distress of adults living in Portugal during the first national lockdown, how they are coping with stress, as well to contribute to a deeper understanding about the role that positivity, experiential avoidance, and coping strategies have in psychological distress and well-being. For this purpose, 586 Portuguese adults (73% females) ranging between 18 and 78 years old (M = 38.96, SD = 12.20) completed an online survey during the initial phase of the pandemic crisis in Portugal. Findings suggest that experiential avoidance was the strongest predictor of a negative response (depression, anxiety, stress, loneliness, and negative emotions), whereas positivity was a better predictor of psychological well-being and lower levels of depression. Additionally, self-blame, behavioral disengagement, and emotional venting were strong risk factors for psychological distress, whereas positive reframing, planning, and acceptance were associated with more positive outcomes. These findings highlight the critical role of experiential avoidance on individuals’ psychological distress and the essential contribution of positive life orientation in promoting flourishing. By offering a better understanding of the complex navigation through the dialectics between positive and negative life features, this study provides important and useful cues for psychological interventions directed at promoting a more positive and adaptive human functioning even through such potential adverse and painful life events.

The earlier in life an individual adopts healthy practices the more impact those practices have on the long term. In this paper we present Social Toothbrush, a hardware plugin for electric toothbrushes that aims to induce proper tooth brushing behaviors on young children and adults. Social Toothbrush does so by taking advantage of family communication and coordination practices to encourage healthy practices. We first describe the theoretical grounding of our design process, Social Translucence, followed by the design and development of Social Toothbrush.

Gamification, the use of game design elements, such as points, levels, badges and achievements, in non-game contexts is a promising approach for encouraging desired behaviors. In this paper we describe our design process and early evaluation of a prototype that sensed children's social interactions (i.e., physical proximity) in the playground, and attempted to encourage pro-social behaviors through motivational feedback on a public display. We illustrate how we came to realize the potentially detrimental effect of gamification on children's intrinsic motivation and depth of reflection, and how we attempted to circumvent this through encouraging empathic understanding on children regarding the consequences of their behaviors on others.