The true potential of technology to change behavior

    Technology could successfully change behaviours where decades of campaigns and legislation have failed. With the quantified self already walking among us and the internet of things within easy reach, digital technology is creating unprecedented opportunities to encourage, enable and empower more sustainable behaviours.

     If we are to unlock the power of technology we must be more ambitious than simply digitising analogue strategies or creating another communications channel.

    The true potential of technology lies in its ability to do things that nothing else can do. In behaviour change terms, the potential to succeed where decades of education programmes, awareness campaigns and product innovation have failed; to make a difference where government policy and legislation has had limited impact.

    Using behavioural insights, it is possible to highlight the bottlenecks, drop out points and achilles heels of traditional behaviour change efforts — the reasons why we have failed in the past — and apply the unique possibilities of technology to these specific challenges.

    Overcoming our limitations

    Luckily, the history of the human race is almost defined by its ability to invent stuff that bolsters its feeble capabilities. That stuff is, of course, what we generically refer to as 'technology'. And in the same way that the internal combustion engine and the light bulb allow us to overcome our relatively feeble powers of motion and perception, so digital technology can be directed to overcoming our relatively feeble powers of reasoning, selfcontrol, motivation, self-awareness and agency—the factors that make behaviour change so difficult.

    Herein lies the true potential of technology: not in the laboratory or the workshop, but in an understanding of the behavioural dynamics that define the human condition, both generally and within the context of a specific user-group, market segment or community.

Fonte: JOHNSON, Steven. Recognising the true potential of technology to change behaviour. Disponível em:<https://www.theguardian.com/sustainablebusiness/behavioural-insights/true-potential-technology-change-behaviour> . Acesso em: 23 ago. 2017. (Adaptado). 

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TEXT 1

World Health Officials Describe Progress Against Tetanus, H.I.V. and Malaria

    Infant and maternal tetanus was officially eliminated from the Americas this year, the Pan American Health Organization announced on Thursday. At one time, the infection killed about 10,000 newborns annually in the Western Hemisphere; tetanus still kills about 35,000 infants around the world. It was one of several significant global health advances, including new programs against malaria and H.I.V., announced last week in conjunction with the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
    Haiti was the last country in the Americas to eliminate neonatal tetanus. That does not mean complete eradication, because the bacteria that cause tetanus exist everywhere in soil and animal droppings. Rather, elimination means that thanks to vaccination of mothers and clean birth procedures — less than one case occurs per 1,000 live births.
    The Americas have generally led the world in eliminating diseases for which vaccines exist. In this hemisphere, smallpox was eliminated in 1971, polio in 1994, rubella in 2015 and measles in 2016 (the diseases are sometimes reintroduced, as measles was at Disneyland in 2014, but outbreaks are usually brought quickly under control).
    Also this week, the President’s Malaria Initiative said it would expand its work to new countries in West and Central Africa, protecting 90 million more people. The initiative, founded in 2005 as part of the United States Agency for International Development, has been a major force in driving down worldwide malaria deaths by about 40 percent in the past decade. The disease most often kills young children and pregnant women. The expansion in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Niger, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso was made possible because Congress increased funding for the initiative in fiscal year 2017, a representativ said
    In his speech to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Trump praised the malaria initiative and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief as examples of leadership in humanitarian assistance by the United States.
    A combination of aid agencies, drug companies and g cocktail to treat H.I.V. would soon be available to 92 countries, including virtually all of Africa, for about $75 a year. The new AIDS cocktail is the first available in poor countries to contain dolutegravir, which is widely used in wealthy countries because it is highly effective and has few side effects. The pill also contains lamivudine, an older but still effective drug, and tenof disoproxil fumarate, another modern drug whose inclus effects and resistance.
    Almost 37 million people in the world have H.I.V., according to Unaids, the U.N.’s AIDS-fighting agency, but fewer than 20 million are now on antiretroviral medicine, which not only saves their lives but prevents them from passing on the disease.

McNEIL Jr., Donald. Disponível em: < https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/health/world-health-tetanus-infants.html?mcubz=1>. Acesso em: 22/09/2017. 

Text1

Autism's Drug Problem 

Many people on the spectrum take multiple medications, which can lead to serious side effects and may not even be effective

Connor was diagnosed with autism early — when he was just 18 months old. His condition was already obvious by then. “He was lining things up, switching lights on and off, on and off,” says his mother, Melissa. He was bright, but he didn’t speak much until age 3, and he was easily frustrated. Once he started school, he couldn’t sit still in class, called out answers without raising his hand and got visibly upset when he couldn’t master a math concept or a handwriting task quickly enough. “One time, he rolled himself up into the carpet like a burrito and wouldn’t come out until I got there,” Melissa recalls. (All families in this story are identified by first name only, to protect their privacy.) 
Connor was prescribed his first psychiatric drug, methylphenidate (Ritalin), at age 6. That didn’t last long, but when he was 7, his parents tried again. A psychiatrist suggested a low dose of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine (Adderall), a stimulant commonly used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The drug seemed to improve his time at school: He was able to sit still for longer periods of time and focus on what his teachers were saying. His chicken-scratch handwriting became legible. Then, it became neat. Then perfect. And then it became something Connor began to obsess over.
“We were told that these are the gives and takes; if it’s helping him enough to get through school, you have to decide if it’s worth it,” Melissa says. It was worth it — for a while.  
But when the Adderall wore off each day, Connor had a tougher time than ever. He spent afternoons crying and refusing to do much of anything. The stimulant made it difficult for him to fall asleep at night. So after a month or two, his psychiatrist added a second medication — guanfacine (Intuniv), which is commonly prescribed for ADHD, anxiety and hypertension, but can also help with insomnia. The psychiatrist hoped it might both ease Connor’s afternoons and help him sleep. 
In some ways, it had the opposite effect. His afternoons did get slightly better, but Connor developed intense mood swings and was so irritable that every evening was a struggle. Rather than simply tossing and turning in bed, he refused to even get under the covers. “He wouldn’t go to bed because he was always angry about something,” Melissa says. “He was getting himself all wound up, carrying on, getting upset at night and crying.” 
 wound up, carrying on, getting upset at night and crying.” After seven months, his parents declared the combination unsustainable. They swapped guanfacine for over-the-counter melatonin, which helped Connor fall asleep with no noticeable side effects. But within a year, he had acquired a tolerance for Adderall. Connor’s psychiatrist increased his dosage and that, in turn, triggered tics: Connor began jerking his head and snorting. Finally, at his 9-year physical, his doctor discovered that he’d only grown a few inches since age 7. He also hadn’t gained any weight in two years; he’d dropped from the 50th percentile in weight to the 5th. That was the end of all the experiments. His parents took him off all prescription drugs, and today, at almost 13 years old, Connor is still medication-free. His tics have mostly disappeared. Although he has trouble maintaining focus in class, his mother says that the risk-benefit ratio of trying another drug doesn’t seem worth it. “Right now we’re able to handle life without it, so we do.”
(...)
For Connor, eliminating prescription drugs was difficult, but doable. For others, multiple medications may seem indispensable. It’s not unusual for children with autism to take two, three, even four medications at once. Many adults with the condition do so, too. Data are scant in both populations, but what little information there is suggests multiple prescriptions are even more common among adults with autism than in children. Clinicians are particularly concerned about children with the condition because psychiatric medications can have long-lasting effects on their developing brains, and yet are rarely tested in children. 
In general, polypharmacy — most often defined as taking more than one prescription medication at once — is commonplace in people with autism. In one study of more than 33,000 people under age 21 with the condition, at least 35 percent had taken two psychotropic medications simultaneously; 15 percent had taken three.
“Psychotropic medications are used pretty extensively in people with autism because there aren’t a lot of treatments available,” says Lisa Croen, director of the Autism Research Program at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California. “Is heavy drug use bad? That’s the question. We don’t know; it hasn’t been studied.”

  Disponível em: <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/autisms-drug-problem/>. Texto adaptado. 

         Drinking coffee could help you live longer Coffee not only helps you feel full of beans, it might add years to your life as well, two major studies have shown. Scientists in Europe and the US have uncovered the clearest evidence yet that drinking coffee reduces the risk of death.

         One study of more than half a million people from 10 European countries found that men who downed at least three cups of coffee a day were 18% less likely to die from any cause than non-coffee drinkers. Women drinking the same amount benefited less, but still experienced an 8% reduction in mortality over the period measured.

        Similar results were reported by American scientists who conducted a separate investigation, recruiting 185855 participants from different ethnic backgrounds. Irrespective of ethnicity, people who drank two to three cups of coffee daily had an 18% reduced risk of death.

        Each of the studies, both published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, showed no advantage from drinking either caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee. Experts believe the antioxidant plant compounds in coffee rather than caffeine are responsible for the life-extending effect. Previous research has suggested that drinking coffee can reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, and some cancers.

         Dr Marc Gunter, from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, who led the European study with colleagues from Imperial College London, said: “We found that higher coffee consumption was associated with a lower risk of death from any cause and specifically for circulatory diseases and digestive diseases. Importantly, these results were similar across all of the 10 European countries, with variable coffee drinking habits and customs. Our study also offers important insights into the possible mechanisms for the beneficial health effects of coffee.”

(www.huffingtonpost.co.uk, 11.07.2017. Adaptado.)

Read the text below and answer the following questions based on it.

The Healing Power of Music

What better “medicine” than a “treatment” that has only positive side effects and “therapy” that is actually enjoyable? Music is shown to have the ability to help organize the brain; especially vital to those who are afflicted with Alzheimer’s.

Studies have shown that the results of a musical therapy session last for several hours afterward. Positive results include elevated mood, increased socialization and appetite and reduction in agitation. These benefits are attributed to the stimulation the brain receives during a music therapy session, a sort of “cognitive workout”.

As speech, writing and traditional forms of communication are compromised, music provides an alternative means of maintaining a connection, thereby helping to normalize interaction between caregiver and patient. Music used therapeutically creates an environment where the patient can be nurtured and cared for in a way that is safe, gentle and appropriate. Music is central to maintaining human bonds when those with dementia have lost the ability to initiate communication or to respond verbally.

The powers of music when focused and used therapeutically are many. Critical to maintaining quality of life for those with Alzheimer’s is management of emotions and preserving the connection with others. Music is conducive to keeping those connections strong as long as possible while helping the participant to focus, increase awareness and orient to the environment. A number of research studies have looked at music therapy as an important adjunct to medical treatment and findings suggest a possible link between the use of music and slowing the progression of dementia.

Music is primal to life and expressed by each of us every day whether through dancing to a favorite tune, keeping rhythm with a pencil or remembering a special time when hearing a forgotten melody. It is central to our lives and is embedded in our culture, defining how we acknowledge milestones, rites of passage and celebrations as well as providing comfort, transformation and inspiration.

         Acessado em 14 de abril de 2017. Adaptado

Read the text below and answer the following questions based on it.

In 2017 the protestant church is celebrating an important event: the 500th anniversary of the Reformation

INSTRUÇÃO: a questão deve ser respondida com base no texto a seguir. 

Adapted from:< http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/consumerism-and-its-antisocial-effects-can-beturned-onor-off.html> and < http://grist.org/living/consumerism-plays-a-huge-role-in-climate-change/>Acessed on September 1st, 2016.

TEXT VI

Music Appreciation

Taken from <http://beingfive.blogspot.com.br/>. Accessed on August 21st, 2017

REMNICK, D. Leonard Cohen makes it Darker. Available

at: www.TAGARCHIVES: Leonard Cohen – Bob Dylan

Interface. Accessed on Nov. 9th, 2016. 

Adaptado de: HOGAN, Linda. Sightings:

The Gray Whales’ Mysterious Journey. Washington,

D.C.: National Geographic, 2002. p. 29-30.

Adaptado de: SHAKESPEARE, W. The Life and Death of

Julius Caesar. Disponível em:

<http://shakespeare.mit.edu/ julius_caesar/full.html>.

Acesso em: 12 nov. 2016.

Available at:<http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170120-why-paper-is-the-real-killer-app>. Retrieved on: 23 Jan. 2017. Adapted.