Daniela Conti

Dr Daniela Conti PhD, MPsy, BSc

Casual Senior Researcher


Summary

Daniela is a casual Senior Researcher in Faculty of College of Business, Technology and Engineering, Sheffield Hallam University. She is a graduate (BSc and MSc) in Psychology (2008, 2010) and BSc in Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Social Education (2002), all awarded with the highest distinction (110/110 cum laude), and received the PhD in Neuroscience at University of Catania, Italy (2016). Before joining Sheffield Hallam University in January 2017, she spent one year as a Visiting Scholar in the Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems at the University of Plymouth, UK. She is a licensed clinical psychologist certified by National Board of Psychologists (Italy), since September 2011. Daniela was a Visiting Professor at the Humanities Department of the University of Catania in the second semester of 2020. 
Her work mainly focuses on the applicability of robotics to autism spectrum disorder with intellectual disability, and the acceptability of robotics in clinical and educational settings.


About

Daniela is author of numerous scientific publications. Her work has been supported by the H2020 research and innovation program of the European Union with a Marie Skłodowska Curie Individual Fellowship: CARER-AID project "Controlled Autonomous Robot for Early Detection and Rehabilitation of Autism and Intellectual Disability". Grant Agreement n.703489. 

Research

2019- present: "Robot Enhanced Therapy for Children with Special Needs", which is in collaboration with the Outpatient Team of the Sheffield Children’s Hospital and the University of Sheffield. 

2019- present: "Cognitive Assessment through Human-robot Interaction", which is in collaboration with the Hursley Labs of the International Business Machines (IBM). 

Publications

Journal articles

Commodari, E., La Rosa, V.L., Coniglio, M.A., & Conti, D. (2021). Editorial: Closure and Reopening of Schools and Universities During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Prevention and Control Measures, Support Strategies for Vulnerable Students and Psychosocial Needs. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.769622

De Pasquale, C., Sciacca, F., Conti, D., Pistorio, M.L., Hichy, Z., Cardullo, R.L., & Di Nuovo, S. (2021). Relations Between Mood States and Eating Behavior During COVID-19 Pandemic in a Sample of Italian College Students. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 684195. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.684195

Conti, D., Trubia, G., Buono, S., Di Nuovo, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2020). Social robots to support practitioners in the education and clinical care of children: The CARER-AID project. Life Span and Disability, 23 (1), 17-30. http://www.lifespanjournal.it/client/abstract/ENG361_2.%20Conti.pdf

Rossi, S., Conti, D., Garramone, F., Santangelo, G., Staffa, M., Varrasi, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2020). The Role of Personality Factors and Empathy in the Acceptance and Performance of a Social Robot for Psychometric Evaluations. Robotics, 9 (39). http://doi.org/10.3390/robotics9020039

Han, J., & Conti, D. (2020). The use of UTAUT and Post Acceptance models to investigate the attitude towards a telepresence robot in an educational setting. Robotics, 9 (2), 34. http://doi.org/10.3390/robotics9020034

Conti, D., Trubia, G., Buono, S., Di Nuovo, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2020). Affect Recognition in Autism: a single case study on integrating a humanoid robot in a standard therapy. Qwerty - Open and Interdisciplinary Journal of Technology, Culture and Education, 14 (2), 66-87. http://doi.org/10.30557/QW000018

Conti, D., Cattani, A., Di Nuovo, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2019). Are Future Psychologists Willing to Accept and Use a Humanoid Robot in Their Practice? Italian and English Students' Perspective. FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY, 10. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02138

De Pasquale, C., Sciacca, F., Conti, D., Dinaro, C., & Di Nuovo, S. (2019). Personality and dissociative experiences in smartphone users. Life Span and Disability.

Di Nuovo, A., Varrasi, S., Lucas, A., Conti, D., Mcnamara, J., & Soranzo, A. (2019). Assessment of Cognitive skills via Human-robot Interaction and Cloud Computing. Journal of Bionic Engineering, 16 (3), 526-539. http://doi.org/10.1007/s42235-019-0043-2

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, S., & Cangelosi, A. (2018). Il contributo metodologico della Developmental Robotics alla psicologia. How developmental robotics can give a methodological contribute to the psychology. Ricerche di Psicologia, 41 (2), 221-239. http://doi.org/10.3280/RIP2018-002002

Di Nuovo, A., Conti, D., Trubia, G., Buono, S., & Di Nuovo, S. (2018). Deep learning systems for estimating visual attention in robot-assisted therapy of children with autism and intellectual disability. Robotics, 7 (2), 25. http://doi.org/10.3390/robotics7020025

Conti, D., Commodari, E., & Buono, S. (2017). Personality factors and acceptability of socially assistive robotics in teachers with and without specialized training for children with disability. Life Span and Disability, 20 (2), 251-272. http://www.lifespan.it/sommario.asp?id=94&ordine=0&anno=2017

De Pasquale, C., Conti, D., Pistorio, M.L., Fatuzzo, P., Veroux, M., & Di Nuovo, S. (2017). Comparison of the CBA-H and SF-36 for the screening of the psychological and behavioural variables in chronic dialysis patients. PLOS ONE, 12 (6), e0180077. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180077

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, S., Cangelosi, A., & Di Nuovo, A. (2016). Lateral specialization in unilateral spatial neglect : a cognitive robotics model. Cognitive Processing, 17 (3), 321-328. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-016-0761-x

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, S., Buono, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2016). Robots in education and care of children with developmental disabilities : a study on acceptance by experienced and future professionals. International Journal of Social Robotics, 9 (1), 51-62. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-016-0359-6

Cannavò, R., Conti, D., & Di Nuovo, A. (2015). Computer-aided assessment of aviation pilots attention: Design of an integrated test and its empirical validation. Applied Computing and Informatics, 12 (1), 16-26. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aci.2015.05.002

De Pasquale, C., Pistorio, M.L., Lauretta, I., Fatuzzo, P., Fornaro, M., Conti, D., ... Veroux, M. (2014). Somatopsychic correlates and quality of life of the dialyzed patient: a cross-sectional study. Transplantation proceedings, 46 (7), 2199-2202. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.transproceed.2014.07.026

di Nuovo, S., de la Cruz, V., Conti, D., Buono, S., & di Nuovo, A. (2014). Mental imagery: Rehabilitation through simulation. Life Span and Disability, 17 (1), 89-118.

Conti, D., Cirasa, C., Di Nuovo, S., & Di nuovo, A. (n.d.). “Robot, tell me a tale!”: A Social Robot as tool for Teachers in Kindergarten. Interaction Studies.

Conference papers

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2021). A brief review of robotics technologies to support social interventions for older users. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 189, 221-232. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5784-2_18

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2020). A brief review of robotics technologies to support social interventions for older users. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 189 (189), 221-232. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5784-2_18

Di Nuovo, A., Bamforth, J., Conti, D., Sage, K., Ibbotson, R., Clegg, J., ... Arnold, K. (2020). An explorative study on robotics for supporting children with Autism Spectrum Disorder during clinical procedures. In 15th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI, (pp. 189-191). Piscataway, NJ, USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc: http://doi.org/10.1145/3371382.3378277

Dell'Aquila, E., Maggi, G., Conti, D., & Rossi, S. (2020). A Preparatory Study for Measuring Engagement in Pediatric Virtual and Robotics Rehabilitation Settings. In International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction 2020, Cambridge (UK), 23 March 2020 - 26 March 2020. ACM: http://doi.org/10.1145/3371382.3378352

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, A., & Di Nuovo, S. (2019). Social robots for older users: a possibility to support assessment and social interventions. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2524. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2524/paper11.pdf

Pollicino, C., Gao, J., Conti, D., Commodari, E., & Soranzo, A. (2019). Q-Methodology and Aesthetic Preferences for IOs: The Role of Alexithymia. PERCEPTION, 48 (2 Supp), 145. https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/peca/48/2_suppl

Di nuovo, A., Varrasi, S., Alexandr, L., Conti, D., Soranzo, A., Bamforth, J., & Mcnamara, J. (2019). Usability Evaluation of a Robotic System for Cognitive Testing. In ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Daegu (Korea), 11 March 2019 - 14 March 2019. IEEE: http://doi.org/10.1109/HRI.2019.8673187

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, S., & Di nuovo, A. (2019). Kindergarten Children Attitude Towards Humanoid Robots: what is the Effect of the First Experience? In ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Daegu (Korea), 11 March 2019 - 14 March 2019. IEEE: http://doi.org/10.1109/HRI.2019.8673204

Varrasi, S., Di Nuovo, S., Conti, D., & Di Nuovo, A. (2018). Social robots as psychometric tools for cognitive assessment: a pilot test. In Ficuciello, F., Ruggiero, F., & Finzi, A. (Eds.) Human friendly robotics : 2017 international workshop. Cham: Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89327-3_8

Rossi, S., Santangelo, G., Staffa, M., Varrasi, S., Conti, D., & Di Nuovo, A. (2018). Psychometric evaluation supported by a social robot: personality factors and technology acceptance. 2018 27th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 6 (6). http://doi.org/10.1109/roman.2018.8525838

Penders, J., Wang, J., Bhowmik, D., Di Nuovo, A., Soranzo, A., Rolph, J., ... Cameron, D. (2018). Robots claiming space: gauging public reaction usingcomputer vision techniques. In Giuliani, M., Assaf, T., & Giannaccini, M.E. (Eds.) Towards autonomous robotic systems: 19th annual conference, TAROS 2018 proceedings, (pp. 468-470). Springer: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96728-8

Conti, D., Trubia, G., Buono, S., Di Nuovo, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2018). Evaluation of a robot-assisted therapy for children with autism and intellectual disability. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 405-415. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96728-8_34

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, A., Trubia, G., Buono, S., & Di Nuovo, S. (2018). Adapting robot-assisted therapy of children with autism and different levels of intellectual disability. In Proceeding HRI '18 Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction :Chicago, IL, USA — March 05 - 08, 2018, (pp. 91-92). New York: ACM Press: http://doi.org/10.1145/3173386.3176962

Varrasi, S., Di Nuovo, S., Conti, D., & Di Nuovo, A. (2018). A social robot for cognitive assessment. In Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction : Chicago, IL, USA — March 05 - 08, 2018, (pp. 269-270). New York: ACM Press: http://doi.org/10.1145/3173386.3176995

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, A., Cirasa, C., & Di Nuovo, S. (2017). A comparison of kindergarten storytelling by human and humanoid robot with different social behavior. In HRI '17. Proceedings of the Companion of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - HRI '17, (pp. 97-98). New York: ACM: http://doi.org/10.1145/3029798.3038359

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2015). A cognitive robotics approach for the study of unilateral spatial neglect. COGNITIVE PROCESSING, 16, S86.

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2015). Cognitive robotics for the modelling of cognitive dysfunctions: A study on unilateral spatial neglect. 5th Joint International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics, ICDL-EpiRob 2015, 300-301. http://doi.org/10.1109/DEVLRN.2015.7346161

Conti, D., Cattani, A., Di Nuovo, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2015). A cross-cultural study of acceptance and use of robotics by future psychology practitioners. 2015 24th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). http://doi.org/10.1109/roman.2015.7333601

Conti, D., Di Nuovo, S., Buono, S., Trubia, G., & Di Nuovo, A. (2015). Use of robotics to stimulate imitation in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A pilot study in a clinical setting. 2015 24th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 4, 1-6. http://doi.org/10.1109/roman.2015.7333589

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