Sound from media increases the immersion of the audience in the story, adding credibility to the narration but also generating emotions in the spectator. A study on children aged 9–13 years (N = 253), using an audio story, investigated the emotional impact of arousal vs. neutral treatment of sound and 3D vs. stereo mix spatialization. The emotional impact was measured combining three different measures: physiological (Electrodermal activity), self-report (pre-post exposition), and richness of mental images elicited by the story (using Think-aloud technique after exposition). Results showed higher emotional impact of the arousal and 3D audio conditions with different patterns according to the age of the participants and distinctive types of interaction when both variables were combined.

“Music and Talent” is an educational project for children between 3 and 9 years old. The aim of the project is to use music and musical intelligence as resources for enhancing important skills in social and cognitive development. These skills are self-esteem, self-confidence, motivation, social and emotional relationships, and well-being. The first part of the article describes the project’s foundation, organization and developed activities. The second part of the article presents the results of two exploratory studies that have been carried out to evaluate some of the developed activities. Study 1 measured the impact of an active music language learning methodology on the “originality” dimension of creativity. A quasi-experimental design was adopted, with experimental and control groups tested pre and post the musical intervention. Findings show a statistically significant increase in the originality dimension in the experimental group. Study 2 measured the children’s self-efficacy in relation to their participation in the Music and Talent project, with positive results. An exploratory study was adopted as the research design, using a validated 10 steps Likert questionnaire with 15 items.

Many technologies for promoting physical activity (PA) give limited importance to critical variables for engagement in PA, such as negative body perceptions. Here, we aim to address this gap by incorporating barriers and experienced body sensations into the design process for wearables and body-based devices thus expanding the design space for such technologies. We first report four co-design workshops with physically inactive participants (n=9); in these workshops, we explored tangible tools (i) to sensitize people to body sensations experienced when facing barriers to PA and (ii) to ideate how haptic and auditory feedback could transform body sensations to increase body-awareness and engagement in PA; results show several interactive sensorial patterns with potential to inform the design of body transformation wearables. These were validated through a follow-up workshop (n=13 participants) and reflections based on insights from a literature review. Our findings are significant for the design of ubiquitous technology to support and initiate PA in everyday contexts through a novel approach of transforming body perceptions/ sensations related to PA barriers. We contribute design inspirations and cards for identifying barriers to PA and to empower designers and researchers to integrate them early in the design process.

Positive psychology and sustainable human development seek to improve the well-being of the individual. To achieve this well-being at the education level, positive education seeks to develop character strengths, and education for development facilitates the development of competencies. Moreover, the literature has demonstrated that the arts in positive education develop individual character strengths, socioemotional competencies and students’ relationship with their environment. Accordingly, in this systematic review, we aim to connect positive psychology and sustainable human development by evaluating the arts in education, based on the concepts of well-being. The results indicate that there are points of confluence between subjective and sustainable well-being, and illuminate the links and their connections between competencies and character strengths, with critical thinking functioning as an important connector between the two. Since character strengths are measurable and educable, we advocate their use as a tool to measure the human development index (HDI) in the education of a specific community. Thus, we are able to evaluate whether the competencies for development are achieved, as well as their role as determinants of the overall well-being of the individual. On the other hand, our work highlights the need to increase the number of investigations in this field to enable an empirical evaluation of how these connections are established and if they are efficient and durable.

Positive education, as a method for the positive development of students’ personality, embodies the 24 character strengths that Peterson and Seligman developed in their studies and that are necessary for new professional profiles. This new social and work landscape inspired supranational institutions, such as the European Union, to develop theories for new educational systems. These Key Competencies seek the comprehensive training of students, on not only the cognitive but the socioemotional plane, as occurs with arts education. With this literature review, we intend to demonstrate the relationship between the Key Competencies as catalysts for the development of character strengths in students through art education programmes. The results conclude that it is possible to define a relationship between the Key Competencies and character strengths and to outline the nature of these relationships, noting that certain patterns of combinations of strengths are repeated in the Key Competencies. Additionally, our work leads us to propose the need to increase the volume of research in this field and to design future studies that allow an empirical evaluation of the nature of these connections and whether they are efficient and enduring.