Avilés-Castillo, Fátima
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Avilés-Castillo, Fátima
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Ambato
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faviles@indoamerica.edu.ec
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Scopus Author ID
57845057800

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User Experience in Virtual Reality (VR) Applications for Elderly People with Cognitive Impairment and Dementia: A Scoping Review

2024 , Buele, Jorge , Avilés-Castillo, Fátima , Guillermo Palacios-Navarro

Background: In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a promising tool to improve the well-being and functional capabilities of older adults. Although VR applications have shown positive results, their impact on user experience and therapeutic outcomes still needs to be evaluated. Objective: This scoping review aims to analyze existing studies on VR use in older adults with neurodegenerative disorders, focusing on the factors that influence usability, satisfaction, and immersion, as well as the effects on emotional and cognitive well-being. Materials and Methods: Empirical studies in English were included on VR applications applied to older adults with cognitive impairment without study design restrictions. The search was conducted in IEEE Xplore, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, identifying a total of 650 initial results. After screening, 14 studies met the inclusion criteria. Results: Immersive VR tends to generate a greater sense of presence, which contributes to improving emotional well-being and reducing neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as apathy and depression. However, its impact on cognitive functions, including memory and executive skills, varied depending on the level of immersion and participant characteristics. Despite these positive findings, significant heterogeneity was evident in study designs, measurement instruments, and user experience indicators. Conclusion: Virtual environments have great potential as a therapeutic tool for older adults, but their success depends on the personalization of applications and the adaptation of technology to the specific needs of this population. Future research should focus on developing standardized protocols, incorporating adaptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, and evaluating the long-term effects of VR to maximize its benefits and minimize its risks. This review was registered in Open Science Framework (OSF). Registration Number: 10.17605/OSF.IO/PNU36

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Ethical and Social Challenges in Virtual Reality: A Bibliometric Analysis

2024 , Buele, Jorge , Homero J. Velastegui , Avilés-Castillo, Fátima , Hugo Paz-León , Guillermo Palacios-Navarro

Virtual reality has revolutionized human interaction with digital environments, creating immersive simulations that have significantly impacted sectors such as education, urban planning, and mental health. Along with its transformative potential, VR presents ethical and societal challenges. This study analyzes trends in research addressing these challenges, focusing on articles published through 2023 in the Web of Science database. Visual and statistical analyses reveal a sustained increase in publications since 2013. Patterns in authorship and collaboration networks emphasize the global and interdisciplinary nature of VR research. Dominant themes include the metaverse and therapeutic applications, as well as concerns about data privacy, virtual identity representation, and psychological effects such as cybersickness. Research highlights temporary symptoms such as nausea and eye strain associated with immersive systems, demonstrating the need for ergonomic design and age-specific usage guidelines. Furthermore, active video games using VR have shown promise in promoting physical activity, offering innovative solutions to combat sedentary lifestyles. Looking ahead, efforts must prioritize equitable access, user safety, and robust ethical frameworks to ensure the responsible and sustainable integration of VR technologies.

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Digital Competency Enhancement in Personnel Training and Development: A Literature Review of Current Trends and Challenges

2024 , Taruchaín Pozo, Fernando , Avilés-Castillo, Fátima

In a perpetually advancing technological landscape, workforce training and development centered around digital competency and computer science principles are critical for ensuring the organizational resilience and competitiveness. This study undertakes a bibliographic analysis of technology-focused personnel training and development, aspiring to identify the strategies implemented, benefits perceived, and challenges emerging in this digital era. Three foundational research questions are outlined: What strategies are employed in technology-focused continuous training? What benefits do workers acquire after technology-centric training? And what are the prevalent challenges in digital skills training? A literature search approach was deployed to answer these queries, executing a meticulous analysis of 33 significant scientific papers. The results indicate a burgeoning trend towards virtual, technology-driven training, and the usage of practical simulations in training. It was also confirmed that continuous technology-focused training creates positive impacts on both work performance and worker attitudes. However, challenges like resistance to change and technological limitations persist in certain organizations.

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Virtual Reality and User Experience: Current Trends and Future Challenges

2025 , Avilés-Castillo, Fátima , Buele, Jorge , Guillermo Palacios-Navarro

Virtual reality is an emerging and versatile technology that is gaining increasing interest from the scientific community, particularly regarding user experience. A review of the literature highlights the need for updated analyses that comprehensively address current trends in this field. The objective of this study is to analyze the evolution of scientific publications related to virtual reality and user experience, identifying trends, the most influential authors, relevant journals, and international collaborations, to provide a comprehensive overview. A bibliometric analysis was conducted using the Web of Science Core Collection database, identifying a total of 1,848 relevant publications. Network analysis techniques and Bradford’s law were applied, allowing for the examination of the distribution and impact of publications, as well as collaboration between authors and institutions. The results show an exponential growth in scientific output, particularly since 2019. While the United States leads in the number of publications, most of the influential authors are from Europe, with notable scientific output in Spain and Portugal. Current research hotspots include virtual reality applications in education and healthcare (over 70% of the analyzed publications), which align with Sustainable Development Goals, particularly 3 and 4. Trends indicate a shift towards integrating virtual reality with artificial intelligence, adaptive systems, and multisensory interaction to enhance immersion and usability. Challenges include a lack of standardized methodologies to assess immersion, presence, and cognitive load, which limits comparisons across studies and hinders the development of best practices. Future research should focus on refining interaction paradigms, improving accessibility, and developing ethical frameworks that respect data privacy and protect the user from cybersickness and the psychological effects of prolonged virtual reality exposure.

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Digital Animation, Health Education in Post COVID-19 Scenario

2024 , Oleas, J , Aguayza-Mendieta C. , Avilés-Castillo, Fátima , Sanchez D.

In post pandemics scenario, viral respiratory diseases are show up very often in changeable and usually cold weather locations. Ecuadorian cities in Andean region have altitude and unpredictable climate characteristics where respiratory diseases are frequent. COVID-19, influenza, flu and other infections are still present in the environment This research shows a development and application of digital animation, showing the audiovisual production processes developed through digital tools, products in educational contexts, adapted to the global health situation post pandemics. The study shows a mixed-type research divided into two phases. The first stage, for information collection, determined the needs for learning topics that collaborates in COVID-19 prevention in elementary education population through digital cartoons as a tool using social media as broadcast medium. The second stage, the animated product evaluation, inside an application scenario, in elementary schools in Riobamba city, that was exhibited through social networks. Through qualitative and quantitative research approaches, it has been possible to demonstrate the animation (digital cartoons) relevance in educational areas. Likewise, the study shows teachers and parents positive predisposition of digital animation use, as a learning tool and its use for educational content transmission, which is something new in the Ecuadorian school scene. © 2024, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Innovative Learning Environments Through Social Media: Evaluation of Their Impact on Secondary Basic Education

2025 , Génesis Montoya-Fernández , Andino Sosa, Ivonne Augusta , Avilés-Castillo, Fátima

Education has evolved with the integration of information technologies, including the use of social media as innovative tools in educational technology. Although initially conceived for social interaction, platforms such as TikTok, WhatsApp, and Facebook have shown potential to enrich the learning environment and teaching-learning processes. In this context, a four-week didactic intervention was designed and implemented in seventh-year basic education students, focused on reinforcing knowledge in natural sciences through activities on social media. The methodology combined a quantitative and qualitative approach, with the application of surveys and pre- and post-intervention evaluations in three areas: electricity and energy, magnetism, atmosphere and climate. The results showed significant improvements in the categories of magnetism (Z = −3.918, p < 0.001) and atmosphere and climate (Z = −3.324, p = 0.001). However, no statistically significant difference was found in the category of electricity and energy (Z = −1.230, p = 0.219). This indicates that the intervention was more effective in certain areas, suggesting the need to adjust strategies for other topics. The effectiveness of using information technologies in education, particularly social media, to improve academic performance in specific areas is highlighted, proposing their potential as complementary teaching tools and the need to continue researching their application in various educational disciplines

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Organizational communication in change management: A narrative review

2026 , Taruchaín Pozo, Fernando , Avilés-Castillo, Fátima , Evelyn Cuesta-Andaluz , Buele, Jorge

In an increasingly digital and competitive business landscape, communication practices within organizations are evolving to meet new operational and cultural demands. These shifts have redefined how companies engage with internal and external stakeholders across different levels. Despite the growing importance of communication, many organizations continue to face structural and strategic challenges that hinder effective message delivery and alignment. This review aims to identify key trends, persistent challenges, and the reported benefits of organizational communication, offering a synthesized view of recent academic contributions to the topic. A structured narrative review was conducted using thematic analysis of 52 peer-reviewed studies published in English and Spanish over the last decade. Using thematic analysis, the study identifies prevailing trends, key challenges, and reported benefits within organizational communication in the context of change management. Major trends include the adoption of digital communication tools, personalized messaging, strategic utilization of social media, and the incorporation of storytelling techniques. Challenges highlighted encompass resistance to change, message fragmentation, data security concerns, and information overload. The review also underscores significant benefits such as enhanced decision-making processes, improved stakeholder alignment, innovation facilitation, reputation management, and talent retention. These findings contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the evolving role of communication as a strategic asset in organizational change processes. The study concludes by emphasizing the necessity of integrated, adaptive, and inclusive communication strategies that not only support change initiatives but also foster organizational resilience and competitiveness in dynamic environments. Together, these findings provide a solid foundation for developing more effective communication practices aligned with the current demands of organizational transformation.

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Performance and Real-World Variability of Predictive Maintenance Models for Vehicle Fleets

2024 , Avilés-Castillo, Fátima , Dayanara Yánez-Arcos , Ayala-Chauvin, Manuel Ignacio , Elena Blanco-Romero

This study presents a comprehensive evaluation of predictive maintenance models for vehicle fleets, detailing a sequence of systematic steps to ensure model performance and address real-world variability. The process begins with database creation and data preprocessing, where relevant maintenance records are filtered, and datetime columns are converted to facilitate time-based calculations. Grouping and aggregation techniques are then applied to count occurrences of specific maintenance activities and identify common failure types. For model training, we define a neural network architecture comprising dense and dropout layers to mitigate overfitting, compile the model with suitable loss functions and optimizers, and train it using the prepared data. The trained model, along with the scaler and encoder, is saved for future use. To augment the dataset, synthetic data is generated using the Faker library and random distributions, with added noise to mimic real-world variability. Preprocessing steps are reapplied to this synthetic data to ensure consistency. By implementing this neural network, we achieved a sensitivity of 0.93 and an ROC of 0.71. Following these detailed steps, we develop a robust predictive maintenance model that effectively identifies failures and non-failures, ultimately enhancing the reliability and efficiency of vehicle fleet management.

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Power Flow Optimization in Electrical Networks using Gekko

2025 , Ayala-Chauvin, Manuel Ignacio , Avilés-Castillo, Fátima , Riba-Romeva, Carles

Power flow optimization in the electrical grid is critical to improve the stability and performance of power systems. The main challenge lies in finding an optimal distribution of power generation that meets the constraints imposed by the grid, such as voltage limits and power system stability conditions. The objective of this research was to evaluate the performance of Gekko in power flow optimization in electrical grids. To do so, a comparison was made with SciPy, a widely used benchmark framework in numerical optimization in order to assess their relative efficiency in problems with complex constraints. The comparison is based on metrics such as solution accuracy, convergence speed, and number of objective function evaluations. The results showed that both methods achieved the same objective value: SciPy (19.7) and Gekko (19.7). However, SciPy was slightly faster (0.01496 seconds vs. 0.0191 seconds), but required 60 objective function evaluations. In contrast, Gekko demonstrated greater computational efficiency, reducing the number of evaluations required for convergence. While SciPy is more efficient on small problems with explicit constraints, Gekko offers greater flexibility on problems with more complex constraints, making it more suitable for larger power systems.

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Optimizing Natural Language Processing: A Comparative Analysis of GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and GPT-4o

2024 , Ayala-Chauvin, Manuel Ignacio , Avilés-Castillo, Fátima

In the last decade, the advancement of artificial intelligence has transformed multiple sectors, with natural language processing standing out as one of the most dynamic and promising areas. This study focused on comparing the GPT-3.5, GPT-4 and GPT-4o language models, evaluating their efficiency and performance in Natural Language Processing tasks such as text generation, machine translation and sentiment analysis. Using a controlled experimental design, the response speed and quality of the outputs generated by each model were measured. The results showed that GPT-4o significantly outperforms GPT-4 in terms of speed, completing tasks 25% faster in text generation and 20% faster in translation. In sentiment analysis, GPT-4o was 30% faster than GPT-4. Additionally, analysis of response quality, assessed using human reviews, showed that while GPT-3.5 delivers fast and consistent responses, GPT-4 and GPT-4o produce higher quality and more de-tailed content. The findings suggest that GPT-4o is ideal for applications that require speed and consistency, while GPT-4, although slower, might be preferred in contexts where text accuracy and quality are important. This study highlights the need to balance efficiency and quality in the selection of language models and suggests implementing additional automatic evaluations in future research to complement the current findings.

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