News

Grandma Huang has never used a smartphone even though her son bought her the latest iPhone 15 and installed high-speed home network and WiFi at home. She said that she did not know how to use it and could not figure out the application instructions. It would be bad if she pressed the wrong button. Smartphones has never appeared in her life and without it, her life would still go on. Aunty Li was envious when she saw her best friend watching “Happiness Comes” on her tablet computer while riding the train. She also wanted to watch it on her 5.4-inch mobile phone, but the screen was too small, and her eyesight was not good, so she had no choice but to give up.

In this digital age, children are exposed to overwhelming amounts of information online, some of it unverified and increasingly generated by non-human sources, such as AI-driven language models. As children grow older, the ability to assess a source’s reliability is an important skill in cultivating critical thinking.

Professor Yow Wei Quin, Head of HASS, writes about confidence in use of technology in seniors.

The connection between a livestream host and viewers is an example of a “parasocial” relationship, a one-sided relationship formed with a media persona, said Assistant Professor Andrew Yee (Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences).

In psychology, theory of mind is an important social cognitive skill that involves the ability to think about mental states, including emotions, desires, beliefs and knowledge, and to recognise that other people’s thoughts and beliefs are not necessarily the same as one’s own.

Some couples in Singapore are going beyond conventional fertility procedures like IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) in their quest for conception.

When you think of the elderly, does the image of a grumpy old man complaining about his children getting in the way, or a lonely old lady with a stern expression pop up in your mind? This stereotype often appears in videos, movies and pictures.

The Singapore University of Technology and Design has introduced Ami, short for Advancing Mental Invigoration developed by Associate Professor Yow Wei Quin and her team; which aims to leverage gamification to harness the cognitive benefits of bilingualism or multilingualism in the elderly.

Called Ami, the app is a simple and interactive touch-screen game suitable for the elderly. It currently offers three games and supports six different languages including dialects, which are Chinese, English, and Malay, Tamil, Hokkien and Cantonese.

What are the benefits of bilingualism? It turns out that in addition to educational benefits, work convenience and maintaining connections with family and cultural traditions, bilingualism also has a positive impact on the brain and even delays the onset of dementia.