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Talks and Poster Presentations (without Proceedings-Entry):

P. Slovak:
"Supporting the learning of empathic skills";
Talk: CogSci-PhD Breakfast, Faculty of Psychology, Vienna University (invited); 2014-03-08.



English abstract:
he focus on empathy and empathetic communication skills are gaining in importance in fundamental cognitive science research, but also in various application domains such as education, or medical and business communities. A particular interest there is then on supporting the training and development of empathic skills, and exploring methods in which we can facilitate the training process and tackle existing challenges.

I will discuss an on-going project in which we draw on recent psychology and social neuroscience research to examine what could be a promising indicator of empathic interactions, based on synchronisation of bio-signals between people. Our goal is not only to understand if/how such bio-signals synchronisation can be interpreted, but also if it has the potential to serve as a useful feedback tool for developing empathic skills in real-world settings. As a case-study, we cooperate with a MSc. counselling program at the University of Nottingham to explore how this bio-synchrony could be used to support the training of student counsellors.

This research is funded by the OEAW DOC Fellowship and pursued in cooperation between Human Computer Interaction Group at Technical University of Vienna, University of Nottingham, and University of Newcastle.

https://igw.tuwien.ac.at/hci/index.php/people/petr-slovak <https://igw.tuwien.ac.at/hci/index.php/people/petr-slovak>/

German abstract:
he focus on empathy and empathetic communication skills are gaining in importance in fundamental cognitive science research, but also in various application domains such as education, or medical and business communities. A particular interest there is then on supporting the training and development of empathic skills, and exploring methods in which we can facilitate the training process and tackle existing challenges.

I will discuss an on-going project in which we draw on recent psychology and social neuroscience research to examine what could be a promising indicator of empathic interactions, based on synchronisation of bio-signals between people. Our goal is not only to understand if/how such bio-signals synchronisation can be interpreted, but also if it has the potential to serve as a useful feedback tool for developing empathic skills in real-world settings. As a case-study, we cooperate with a MSc. counselling program at the University of Nottingham to explore how this bio-synchrony could be used to support the training of student counsellors.

This research is funded by the OEAW DOC Fellowship and pursued in cooperation between Human Computer Interaction Group at Technical University of Vienna, University of Nottingham, and University of Newcastle.

https://igw.tuwien.ac.at/hci/index.php/people/petr-slovak <https://igw.tuwien.ac.at/hci/index.php/people/petr-slovak>/

Keywords:
Empathy; Feedback; Bio-Sensors; Mixed Methods;

Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.