Offside
Lado B

Social solidarity

Corporate

INESC TEC, in the words of our partners – Statement by Teresa Limpo from the Center for Psychology at University of Porto (CPUP).

Limelight

"For us, a task that pull us out of our “comfort zone” is always good because it challenges our BRAIN to work at 110%", Susana Rodrigues and Duarte Dias (C-BER)

Serious Thinking

“How can I apply the idea of “innovate the innovation” in the projects that I’m involved here at INESC TEC?", João Victor (CPES)

Gallery of the Uncommon

"...we were almost finishing and waiting for the participants and speakers to leave in order to tidy up the room, when suddenly a good-looking participant appeared asking for his badge."

Where are you now?

Every month INESC TEC sends highly qualified individuals into the market...

Jobs 4 the Boys & Girls

In this section, the reader may find reference to public announcements made by INESC TEC offering grants, contracts and other opportunities.

Biptoon

More scenes of how life goes merrily on...

 
 

Corporate

Corporate

This section gives voice to companies and organisations that have worked with INESC TEC in various projects and activities. A good relationship and good examples are fundamental ingredients for science and technology to serve society with equal amounts of enthusiasm and professionalism.

 

Teresa limpo, researcher at cpup, m2s project

  • "The collaboration with INESC TEC couldn’t be more positive. Wisdom, patience, curiosity, openness and optimism are some of the words that characterise our multidisciplinary meetings. The experience of INESC TEC’s researchers combined with their ability to listen to our needs and to deal with our “technological ignorance” are definitely the foundation of this partnership, which intends to bring psychology and technology to schools."

History of the relationship between the company and INESC TEC

The relation between CPUP and INESC TEC is relatively recent, being the first time that the Researcher Group in Neurocognition and Language of CPUP develops a project in collaboration with INESC TEC. In 2017, during the preparation of the project’s application, there was the need to look for a partner in order to put into practice the idea of developing an application that implemented mindfulness techniques while simultaneously registering psychophysiological actions. Mindfulness techniques include body relaxation (conscious relaxation of the muscles, for example) creation of mental images (picturing a calm sea, for example) and full attention training (awareness of own thoughts without judgement, for example). Common contacts got these groups communicating with each other, thus starting this partnership. This partnership took shape with the approval for funding of the M2S Project under the Operational Programme Competitiveness and Internationalisation, supported by FEDER and FCT through the State Budget (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-028404).

Business areas

Research

Year in which the institution collaborated with INESC TEC

Since 2017

Title of the project

M2S - Mindfulness to students’ success: Relating executive functions and writing through a mindfulness app to promote children’s cognitive, social, and health-related outcomes

INESC TEC Centre with which the company collaborated

CSIG - Centre for Information Systems and Computer Graphics

Project manager (INESC TEC)

António Coelho

Statement about the Project

M2S Project intends to study the relation between the executive functions, writing, school performance actions, social competences and health indicators. One of the main goals of the project is to develop an intervention that provides indirect training of the executive functions in the children of the second grade of elementary school (that is, training that involves the practice of activities that aren’t directly related to the executive functions, but that exercise and stimulate these cognitive competencies). This training will involve the use of mindfulness techniques, which research has shown to be effective in order to promote the executive functions, through its impact on the autonomous nervous system. This intervention will be transformed into an application for smartwatches that will not only allow the autonomous implementation of the intervention, but also the collection of psychophysiologics data (heart rate, for example) in a valid and reliable way.

Generally, the application is expected to promote the executive functions, which in turn will have positive effects on writing, school performance, social skills and health indicators. In a second phase, the additional value of combining this application with an intervention in writing implemented by teachers will be examined. The activities of the project can be followed at: https://www.facebook.com/M2S.project/

One of the main results that is intended to be achieved with this project is the access to an application that implements mindfulness techniques in children in an autonomous way and based on scientific evidences. This is an important result given the massive spreading of technological solutions that aren’t empirically tested. The achievement of this goal will largely depend on the collaboration between CPUP and INESC TEC, since we want to develop an effective solution both from the technological and the psychological functioning of the user point of view.

Regarding future collaborations with INESC TEC, at the moment, we are focused on continuing this productive collaboration under the M2S Project. Besides that, we will also try to look for opportunities that will allow us to consolidate this partnership, specifically, through the development of new projects that benefit from the complementarity of knowledge from both institutions.