Martina Brady/Staff Writer
Psychologists have now developed a do-it-yourself tool enhancing memory recall, which helps with the COVID-19 contact tracing process.
FIU and Iowa State University teamed up to develop a DIY contact tracing app for COVID-19 exposure called CogTracer.
The program relies on the science of memory to create an innovative way to track the spread of COVID-19 through communities.
The psychology professors believe this tool is the first of its kind to use investigative interviewing, techniques used to question victims, perpetrators, and witnesses of crimes.
Through a guided interview, the free app helps users identify places, events, and people they came in close contact with before developing symptoms.
FIU psychology professors Deborah Goldfarb, Ronald Fisher, and Jacqueline Evans, along with ISU psychology professor Christian Meissner hope the app will save lives and restore the economy.
Before the pandemic, Evans focused her research on contact tracing of infectious diseases like meningitis and STDs.
“When COVID-19 happened, we started following up that research,” said Evans. “We developed what we think is a great way to interview people who potentially, or do have COVID-19.”
The team received a grant from the National Science Foundation on May 15, to develop a contact tracing interview technique. They tested whether a self-administered web survey or an audio-only Zoom call was most effective.
“The results for that project are currently under review [and] we’re hoping to get them published,” said Evans. “We essentially tried to compare those two to see if one performed better, and the basic idea was that we found it didn’t really matter which way you did it.”
The team decided to develop a self-administered online survey to save time and money, called CogTracer. The survey guides users through a cognitive interview to help them remember who they came in contact with.
“If somebody has to call you and actually go through an interview with you, that means that interviewer is using up a lot of time on the phone with you. And so, a much more efficient way would be to have each individual patient go through the interview themselves,” said Evans.
While the do-it-yourself format required fewer resources, it also had some limitations.
“If you don’t understand something and there’s an interviewer, you can ask them to clarify,” said Evans. “When it’s a self administered interview, there isn’t anyone there to answer your questions.”
The app uses audio prompts to help users create a list of contacts or people they encountered while COVID-19 positive. It gives situational prompts to help unlock memories related to the workplace, healthcare, social life, and neighbors.
The tool also uses keywords to prompt the users’ memory. Some of the emotional prompts are “surprised,” “uncomfortable” and “sad.”
According to Evans, these clue words help users recall moments they would normally overlook.
“Instead of thinking about something more concrete like going to a sporting event or going to dinner, it’s thinking more about memory cues related to how you felt that might remind you of things that other types of clues wouldn’t have reminded you [of],” she said.
At the end of the interview, the program asks the user to look at records including social media, bank statements, photos, and phone call history.
Evans says that reviewing records at the end of the interview helps users remember more details.
“What people tend to do is look at their phone, then they rely on that and they don’t actually try that hard to remember,” said Evans. “If we only rely on the phone, then it becomes a shortcut and we forget to rely on our own memories.”
After going through the questions, the user will have compiled a list of contacts. Then, they are prompted to reach out to those on the list and provide dates of contact so they know how long to quarantine.
While Evans says most contact tracing interviews are simple, this app encourages users to dig deeper to uncover memories.
“For the most part, contact tracing interviews are pretty straightforward, said Evans. “They’re very short and they’re not developed by people who understand how memory works.”
This program is different because it urges users to uncover forgotten information.
“Instead of just asking people, ‘Okay, what do you remember?’ and then taking their word for it and stopping the interview, you keep prompting them with additional cues, categories, and tools… to help you remember,” said Evans.
Evans says that contact tracing can be difficult for students. She believes students who attend classrooms and school events may struggle to remember everyone they came in contact with.
Evans told PantherNOW, “for some students, that is the life that they’re leading right now, they do go to events and do things where there’s a lot of people, and that’s a really difficult challenge in terms of memory.”
The app is currently available in English and Spanish, however, Evans and her colleagues plan to expand the app to be more accessible.
“We do hope to make it available in as many languages as we can because then it can be used by people all around the world,” she said.
Additionally, the psychologists are looking into how the app can be adapted for multiple age groups.
“We’re looking at how useful it is for children and the elderly, because they have… different abilities and needs in terms of their memories,” said Evans. “It’s possible that in the future we might even develop a version that [is] specifically… designed for use with students.”
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