Robot-based Intervention to Improve Physical Activity in Older Adults

Physical inactivity is considered a global pandemic negatively impacting the health of over 60% of older adults in America. Interventions aimed at improving physical activity in older adults focus on training reflective processes such as providing information on health benefits of physical activity. These interventions generally find that participants improved their intentions to be physically active rather than supporting actual change in behaviours to become physically active. There is growing support for the idea that human behaviour is the result of a combination of quick automatic processes and slower reflective processes. Interventional studies have used cognitive bias modification tasks that target the quick automatic processes to retrain participant's bias. Such studies find that participant's bias towards diet, alcohol, and phobias can be altered using these cognitive bias modi