skip to main content
10.1145/2388676.2388726acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication Pagesicmi-mlmiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Knowledge gaps in hands-on tangible interaction research

Published: 22 October 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Multimodal interfaces including tablets, touch tables, and tangibles are beginning to receive much attention in the child-computer interaction community. Such interfaces enable interaction through actions, gestures, touch, and other modalities not tapped into by traditional desktop computing. Researchers have suggested that multimodal interfaces, such as tangibles, have great potential to support children's learning and problem solving in spatial domains due to the hands-on physical and spatial properties of this interaction style. Despite a long history of hands-on learning with physical and computational materials, there is little theoretical or empirical work that identifies specific causes for many of the claimed benefits. Neither is there empirically validated design guidance as to what design choices might be expected to have significant impacts. In this paper I suggest several avenues of investigation, based on my own research interests, which would address this knowledge gap. I provide summaries of theoretical mechanisms that may explain claimed benefits, outline how the specific features of tangible interfaces might support or enhance these mechanisms, and describe current and future investigations that address current gaps of knowledge.

References

[1]
Antle, A.N. The CTI framework: Informing the design of tangible systems for children. In Proc. Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, ACM Press, (2007) 195--202.
[2]
Antle, A.N. Exploring how children use their hands to think: An embodied interactional analysis. Behaviour and Information Technology, in press, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2011.630415
[3]
Antle, A.N., Droumeva, M. and Ha, D. Hands on what? Comparing children's mouse-based and tangible-based interaction. In Proc. Conference on Interaction Design and Children, ACM Press, (2009) 80--88.
[4]
Antle, A.N. and Wise, A.F. Getting down to details: Using learning theory to inform tangibles research and design for children. Interacting with Computers, accepted, draft available at www.antle.iat.sfu.ca/publications
[5]
Antle, A.N., Wise, A.F. and Nielsen, K. Towards Utopia: Designing tangibles for learning. In Proc. Conference on Interaction Design for Children, ACM Press, (2011) 11--20.
[6]
Aronson, E., Blaney, N., Stephan, C., Sikes, J. and Snapp, M. The Jigsaw Classroom. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA, 1978.
[7]
Bekker, M.M. and Antle, A.N. Developmentally Situated Design (DSD): A design tool for child-computer interaction. In Proc. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press, (2011) 2531--2540.
[8]
Bevans, A. Investigating the Effects of Bimanual Multitouch Interaction on Creativity. Thesis, Interactive Arts + Technology, Simon Fraser University, Supervisor: Antle, A.N. (2011) 101 pages.
[9]
Brosterman, N. Inventing Kindergarten. Harry Abrams Inc., New York, NY, USA, 1997.
[10]
Clark, A. Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. Bradford Books, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1997.
[11]
Clark, H.H. and Brennan, S.E. Grounding in communication. In Resnick, L.B., Levine, J.M. and Teasley, S.D. eds. Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 1991, 127--149.
[12]
Defeyter, M. and German, T. Acquiring an understanding of design: evidence from children's insight problem solving. Cognition 89, 2, (2003) 133--155.
[13]
DeLoache, J.S. Dual representations and young children's use of scale models. Child Development 71, 2, (2000) 329--338.
[14]
Dewey, J. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Holt and Co., New York, 1938.
[15]
Evans, M. and Wilkins, J.L.M. Social interactions and instructional Artifacts: Emergent socio-technical affordances and constraints for children's geometric thinking. Journal of Educational Computing Research 44, 22, (2011) 141 - 171.
[16]
Gattis, M. Space as a basis for abstract thought. In Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought, Bradford Books, 2001, 1--14.
[17]
Gibbs, R.W. Embodiement and Cognitive Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, USA, 2005.
[18]
Goldin-Meadow, S. Hearing Gesture: How Our Hands Help Us Think. First Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2005.
[19]
Heilman, K.M., Nadeau, S.E. and Beversdorf, D.O. Creative innovation: Possible brain mechanisms. Neurocase 9, 5, (2003) 369--379.
[20]
Hernik, M. and Gergely Csibra, G. Functional understanding facilitates learning about tools in human children. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 19, 1, (2009) 34--38.
[21]
Hoppe, K.D. Hemispheric specialization and creativity. The Psychiatric Clinics of North America 11, 3, (1988) 303--315.
[22]
Hornecker, E. A design theme for tangible interaction: Embodied facilitation. In Proc. Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Springer, (2005) 23--44.
[23]
Hornecker, E. and Creative idea exploration within the structure of a guiding framework: the card brainstorming game. In Proc. Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction ACM Press, (2010) 101--108.
[24]
Inkpen, K., Ho-Ching, W., Kuederle, O., Scott, S. and Shoemaker, G. This is fun! we're all best friends and we're all playing: supporting children's synchronous collaboration. In Proc. Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning, International Society of the Learning Sciences, (1999) 1--12.
[25]
Kirsh, D. Complementary strategies: Why we use our hands when we think. In Proc. Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, (1995) 212--217.
[26]
Kitchner, K.S. Cognition, metacognition, and epistemic cognition:A three-level model of cognitive processing. Human Development 26, (1983) 222--232.
[27]
Kreijns, K., Kirschner, P.A. and Jochems, W. Identifying the pitfalls for social interaction in computer-supported collaborative learning environments: A review of the research. Computers in Human Behavior 19, 3, (2003) 335--353.
[28]
Lewis, R.T. Organic signs, creativity, and personality characteristics of patients following cerebral commissurotomy. Clinical Neuropsychology 1, (1979) 29--33.
[29]
Marshall, P. Do tangible interfaces enhance learning? In Proc. Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, ACM Press, (2007) 163--170.
[30]
Marshall, P., Cheng, P.C.H. and Luckin, R. Tangibles in the balance: a discovery learning task with physical or graphical materials. In Proc. Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, ACM Press, (2010) 153--160.
[31]
Marshall, P., Fleck, R., Harris, A., Rick, J., Hornecker, E., Rogers, Y., Yuill, N. and Dalton, N.S. Fighting for control: Children's embodied interactions when using physical and digital representations. In Proc. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM press, (2009) 2149--2152.
[32]
Martin, T. A theory of physically distributed learning: How external environments and internal states interact in mathematics learning. Child Development Perspectives 3, 3, (2009) 140--144.
[33]
Miyake, N., Masukawa, H. and Shirouzou, H. The complex jigsaw as an enhancer of collaborative knowledge building in undergraduate introductory science courses. In Proc. European Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, Maastricht University, (2001) 454--461.
[34]
Montessori, M. The Secret of Childhood. Ballantine Books, New York, NY, USA, 1966.
[35]
O'Malley, C. and Stanton-Fraser, D. Literature review in learning with tangible technologies (2004) http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/lit_reviews/Tangible_Review.pdf (accessed Aug 17 2012).
[36]
Papert, S. Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas. Basic Books, New York, NY, USA, 1993.
[37]
Piaget, J. The Origins of Intelligence in Children. University Press, New York, NY, USA, 1952.
[38]
Resnick, M. Computer as paintbrush: Technology, play, and the creative society. In Singer, D., Golinkoff, R.M. and Hirsh-Pasek, K. eds. Play = Learning, Oxford University Press, 2006.
[39]
Schwartz, D.L. and Martin, T. Distributed learning and mutual adaptation. Pragmatics & Cognition 14, 2, (2006) 313--332.
[40]
Shaer, O. and Hornecker, E. Tangible User Interfaces: Past, Present and Future Directions. Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction 3, 1--2, (2010) 1--137.
[41]
Shobe, E.R., Ross, N.M. and Fleck, J.I. Influence of handedness and bilateral eye movements on creativity. Brain and Cognition 71, 3, (2009) 204--214.
[42]
Sinnott, J.D. A model for solution of ill-structured problems: Implications for everyday and abstract problem solving. In Sinnott, J.D. ed. Everyday problem solving: Theory and applications, Praeger, New York, 1989, 72--99.
[43]
Thelen, E. and Smith, L., B A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1996.
[44]
Uttal, D. On the relation between play and symbolic thought: The case of mathematics manipulatives. In Contemporary Perspectives in Early Childhood, Information Age Press, 2003, 97--114.
[45]
Wang, S. Comparing tangible and multitouch interfaces for a spatial problem solving task. Thesis, Interactive Arts + Technology, Simon Fraser University, Supervisor: Antle, A.N. (2010) 94 pages.
[46]
Zaman, B., Van den Abeele, V., Markopoulos, P. and Marshall, P. Editorial: the evolving field of tangible interaction for children: the challenge of empirical validation. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 16, 4, (2012) 367--378.

Cited By

View all

Index Terms

  1. Knowledge gaps in hands-on tangible interaction research

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    ICMI '12: Proceedings of the 14th ACM international conference on Multimodal interaction
    October 2012
    636 pages
    ISBN:9781450314671
    DOI:10.1145/2388676
    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]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 22 October 2012

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. child-computer interaction
    2. digital manipulatives
    3. hands-on interaction
    4. hands-on learning
    5. multi-modal user interfaces
    6. research agenda
    7. tangible user interfaces
    8. touch interfaces

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    ICMI '12
    Sponsor:
    ICMI '12: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MULTIMODAL INTERACTION
    October 22 - 26, 2012
    California, Santa Monica, USA

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 453 of 1,080 submissions, 42%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)21
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5
    Reflects downloads up to 14 Sep 2024

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2023)Breezy the Calm Monster: Soft Toy Design Combined with Pervasive Technology to Teach Deep BreathingAdjunct Proceedings of the 2023 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing & the 2023 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computing10.1145/3594739.3610778(271-275)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2023
    • (2022)VIC — A Tangible User Interface to train memory skills in children with Intellectual DisabilityInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.10037632:COnline publication date: 1-Jun-2022
    • (2021)Tangible interfaces in early years’ education: a systematic reviewPersonal and Ubiquitous Computing10.1007/s00779-021-01556-x26:1(39-77)Online publication date: 23-May-2021
    • (2019)Using ethnographic data to support preschool children's game designProceedings of the 18th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3357155.3358470(1-10)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2019
    • (2018)Designing with and for PreschoolersProceedings of the Conference on Creativity and Making in Education10.1145/3213818.3213825(45-54)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2018
    • (2018)Customizing Developmentally Situated Design (DSD) CardsProceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3173574.3174166(1-9)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2018
    • (2018)Using technological functions on a multi-touch table and their affordances to counteract biases and foster collaborative problem solvingInternational Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning10.1007/s11412-018-9271-413:1(7-33)Online publication date: 19-Feb-2018
    • (2016)SmallTalkProceedings of the TEI '16: Tenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/2839462.2839481(253-261)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2016
    • (2013)Five key challenges in end-user development for tangible and embodied interactionProceedings of the 15th ACM on International conference on multimodal interaction10.1145/2522848.2522887(247-254)Online publication date: 9-Dec-2013

    View Options

    Get Access

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media