research-article

Collaborating to remember: a distributed cognition account of families coping with memory impairments

Authors:

Jeremy Birnholtz,

Brian Richards,

Ronald Baecker,

Mike MassimiAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '08: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 825 - 834

https://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357186

Published: 06 April 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Individuals with cognitive deficits and their families are prime examples of collaborative "systems" that seek to perform everyday tasks together. Yet there has been little investigation into how these families communicate and coordinate in basic tasks like remembering appointments. In this paper we take a distributed cognition approach to studying ten families struggling with amnesia through nonparticipant observation and interviews. Our data show that the families work closely together as cognitive systems that must compensate for memory volatility in one of the members. We explore our participants' strategies for overcoming these difficulties and present lessons for the design of assistive technologies, highlighting the need for redundancy, easy and frequent synchronization, and awareness of updates. We conclude with implications for distributed cognition theory.

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Cited By

Cha YGunal YWou ALee JNewman MPark S(2024)Shared Responsibility in Collaborative Tracking for Children with Type 1 Diabetes and their ParentsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642344(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642344
Xiao LBandukda MAngerbauer KLin WBhatnagar TSedlmair MHolloway C(2024)A Systematic Review of Ability-diverse Collaboration through Ability-based Lens in HCIProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641930(1-21)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641930
Cha YWou ASaxena ALee JNewman MPark S(2023)It’s Like an Educated Guessing Game: Parents’ Strategies for Collaborative Diabetes Management with Their ChildrenProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581522(1-15)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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Index Terms

Collaborating to remember: a distributed cognition account of families coping with memory impairments
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing profession
      1. Assistive technologies
  2. User characteristics
    1. People with disabilities

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cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '08: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2008

1870 pages

ISBN:9781605580111

DOI:10.1145/1357054

General Chairs:
Mary Czerwinski
Microsoft Research, USA
,
Arnie Lund
Microsoft, USA
,
Program Chair:
Desney Tan
Microsoft Research, USA

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 06 April 2008

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April 5 - 10, 2008

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CHI '08 Paper Acceptance Rate 157 of 714 submissions, 22%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

Cha YGunal YWou ALee JNewman MPark S(2024)Shared Responsibility in Collaborative Tracking for Children with Type 1 Diabetes and their ParentsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642344(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
Xiao LBandukda MAngerbauer KLin WBhatnagar TSedlmair MHolloway C(2024)A Systematic Review of Ability-diverse Collaboration through Ability-based Lens in HCIProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641930(1-21)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
Cha YWou ASaxena ALee JNewman MPark S(2023)It’s Like an Educated Guessing Game: Parents’ Strategies for Collaborative Diabetes Management with Their ChildrenProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581522(1-15)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
Cha YSaxena AWou ALee JNewman MPark S(2022)Transitioning Toward Independence: Enhancing Collaborative Self-Management of Children with Type 1 DiabetesProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3502055(1-17)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
Dai JMoffatt KLin JTruong K(2022)Designing for Relational Maintenance: New Directions for AAC ResearchProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3502011(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
Jones W(2022)Building a Better World with Our InformationundefinedOnline publication date: 10-Mar-2022
Wolf CFu WPan SBrdiczka OChau PCalvary G(2019)Explainability scenariosProceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3301275.3302317(252-257)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2019
Michaelian KArango-Muñoz S(2018)Collaborative Memory Knowledge: A Distributed Reliabilist PerspectiveCollaborative Remembering10.1093/oso/9780198737865.003.0013(231-247)Online publication date: 18-Jan-2018
Finley JNaaz FGoh FFinley JNaaz FGoh F(2018)Theoretical Perspectives from Across PsychologyMemory and Technology10.1007/978-3-319-99169-6_5(75-102)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2018
Finley JNaaz FGoh FFinley JNaaz FGoh F(2018)Results: The Interplay Between Internal and External MemoryMemory and Technology10.1007/978-3-319-99169-6_4(49-72)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2018
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