The authors thank Dr. Chen Yu for his guidance in the creation of this manuscript and for the data used in the Representative Results section. We thank the participating families that agreed to be used in the figures and filming of the protocol as well as Lydia Hoffstaetter for her careful reading of this manuscript. This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health grants T32HD007475-22 (J.I.B., D.H.A.), R01 HD074601 (S.B.), R01 HD028675 (S.B., L.B.S.), and F32HD093280 (L.K.S.). National Science Foundation grants BCS-1523982 (S.B., L.B.S) and CAREER IIS-1253549 (S.B., D.J.C.), the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program #1342962 (S.E.S.), and by Indiana University through the Emerging Area of Research Initiative - Learning: Brains, Machines, and Children (J.I.B., S.B., L.B.S.).

The following procedure to collect data on infant and toddler&#8217;s visual experiences in the laboratory and at home was approved by the Indiana University Institutional Review Board. Informed consent was obtained from the infant&#8217;s caregiver.
1. Choose a Head Camera
NOTE: There are numerous small, lightweight, and portable cameras readily available for purchase (Figure 2).
<ol>
	<li>Choose a head camera that is unobtrusive and will not influence the scenes being recorded.
	<ol>
		<li>Mount the camera onto a snug hat or headband using a temporary adhesive or securely mount the camera onto a small plastic plate attached to the headband. Position the camera at the child&#8217;s brow (Figure 2B, left).
		<ol>
			<li>Depending on the shape of the camera, mount the camera by sewing small cloth loops into a headband or hat (Figure 2B, center and right).</li>
			<li>Ensure that the hat or headband are adjustable to achieve a snug and comfortable fit on the child&#8217;s head (Figure 2A). 
			NOTE: A camera located directly between the eyes of the infant is theoretically ideal, however this is not quite possible with current technology. Small cameras that can be placed low on the forehead are becoming increasingly available.</li>
		</ol>
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>If cameras are being sent home with the parents, ensure that parents can use them without any technical help.
	<ol>
		<li>Before the parents leave the laboratory, train them on how to operate the head camera.</li>
		<li>Send the parents home with the camera to use, the head-band or hat, and a hand-out describing the procedure to turn on the camera and record data.</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>Ensure that the cameras are light enough for infants to wear and forget about. 
	NOTE: The recommended weight is less than 30 g3. Any chosen camera should not heat up during use and must be durable under heavy use.</li>
	<li>If the experimental setup requires the children to be freely-moving, store recorded video to an internal storage card. Otherwise, use cameras tethered to the data collection computer.</li>
	<li>Use a camera with a high-quality lens to better leverage recent advances in machine learning algorithms which segment visual scenes into regions of interest.
	<ol>
		<li>If visual scenes will be manually coded by researchers, use a camera that can capture images at sufficient quality for manual inspection.</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>Ensure that any battery-powered camera is capable of recording for the desired amount of time.</li>
	<li>Shortly before beginning the experiment or sending the camera home with the parents, test the head camera to ensure it is working appropriately.</li>
</ol>
2. Data Collection in the Laboratory
NOTE: Head-mounted cameras can be easily added to most experiments.
<ol>
	<li>Have 2-3 experimenters place the camera onto the child&#8217;s head: one experimenter places the head camera, one monitors the head-camera view, and, if needed, one distracts the child.
	<ol>
		<li>Ask the parent to ensure that the child remains calm and to distract the child during the placement process.</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>Perform the camera placement in three steps as follows.
	<ol>
		<li>Desensitize the infant to hand actions near their head.
		<ol>
			<li>Ask the parent to lightly touch or stroke the infant&#8217;s head and hair several times.</li>
			<li>Ask the experimenter placing the hat on the infant&#8217;s head to do the same as in 2.2.1.1.</li>
		</ol>
		</li>
		<li>Have the experimenter place the head-mounted camera when the child is distracted.
		<ol>
			<li>Use push-button toys to keep the child&#8217;s hands busy.</li>
			<li>Have the distracting experimenter or parent help at this stage by gently pushing the child&#8217;s hands toward the engaging toy so that the child&#8217;s hands do not go to the head.</li>
		</ol>
		</li>
		<li>Tighten the hat on the child&#8217;s head and adjust the head camera when the child is engaged with the toy.
		<ol>
			<li>Adjust the camera so that when the infant holds an object in front of his/her face, the object is centered in the head camera FOV.</li>
			<li>If the child is sitting, adjust the camera so that it captures most of the child&#8217;s lap when the child looks down.</li>
		</ol>
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>After placing the camera on the child&#8217;s head, ask the experimenter to leave the room and begin the recording.</li>
	<li>In the event that a camera is moved out of place or removed, re-enter the room to correct the camera.
	<ol>
		<li>Terminate the experiment if the child does not tolerate the camera being reapplied. 
		NOTE: For recording natural environments in the home, first fit a hat and camera to the individual infant and show parents how to position the camera. The design and fit of the camera must ensure that parents will be able to put the hat on their child without technical help.</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
</ol>
3. Data Collection for the Parent-Infant Study
NOTE: The following representative method for head-cameras uses naturalistic toy play in the lab to demonstrate the type of analyses that can be conducted on the egocentric views of infants and their parents (Figure 3A).
<ol>
	<li>Outfit the parent and child with head-mounted cameras, as described in 2.1 and 2.2.</li>
	<li>Use head cameras to capture videos with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels at 30 frame/s. Proceed as described in steps 2.3 and 2.4.
	<ol>
		<li>Subsample the video stream at one frame every 5 s.</li>
		<li>Manually draw bounding boxes around each toy (Figure 3B) within view using commercial software or a program developed in-house (see Figure 3C for a sample frame).
		<ol>
			<li>If only part of a toy is visible due to occlusion by other toys or truncation on the edge of the frame, only draw bounding boxes when a toy is easily identifiable and include all visible parts of the toy.</li>
			<li>For example, if only the doll&#8217;s leg is visible, draw a bounding box around its leg. If an object occludes half of the doll, leaving the hair and legs visible, then draw a box that includes both hair and legs.</li>
		</ol>
		</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
</ol>

<ol>
	<li>James, W. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=.">.</a> The Principles of Psychology. , (1890).</li><li>Quine, W., Van, O. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=.">.</a> Word and object: An inquiry into the linguistic mechanisms of objective reference. , (1960).</li><li>Yoshida, H., Smith, L. B. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=What's+in+view+for+toddlers?+Using+a+head+camera+to+study+visual+experience.">What's in view for toddlers? Using a head camera to study visual experience.</a> Infancy. 13 (3), 229-248 (2008).</li><li>Yu, C., Smith, L. B. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=Embodied+attention+and+word+learning+by+toddlers.">Embodied attention and word learning by toddlers.</a> Cognition. 125 (2), 244-262 (2012).</li><li>Bambach, S., Smith, L. B., Crandall, D. J., Yu, C. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=Objects+in+the+center:+How+the+infant's+body+constrains+infant+scenes.">Objects in the center: How the infant's body constrains infant scenes.</a> Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics 2016. , 132-137 (2016).</li><li>Adolph, K. E., Gilmore, R. O., Freeman, C., Sanderson, P., Millman, D. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=Toward+open+behavioral+science.">Toward open behavioral science.</a> Psychological Inquiry. 23 (3), 244-247 (2012).</li><li>Sanderson, P. M., Scott, J. J. P., Johnston, T., Mainzer, J., Wantanbe, L. M., James, J. M. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=MacSHAPA+and+the+enterprise+of+exploratory+sequential+data+analysis+(ESDA).">MacSHAPA and the enterprise of exploratory sequential data analysis (ESDA).</a> International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 41 (5), 633-681 (1994).</li><li>Pereira, A. F., Smith, L. B., Yu, C. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=A+bottom-up+view+of+toddler+word+learning.">A bottom-up view of toddler word learning.</a> Psychonomic Bulletin &amp; Review. 21 (1), 178-185 (2014).</li><li>Yu, C., Smith, L. B. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=Joint+Attention+without+Gaze+Following:+Human+Infants+and+Their+Parents+Coordinate+Visual+Attention+to+Objects+through+Eye-Hand+Coordination.">Joint Attention without Gaze Following: Human Infants and Their Parents Coordinate Visual Attention to Objects through Eye-Hand Coordination.</a> PLOS ONE. 8 (11), e79659 (2013).</li><li>Jayaraman, S., Fausey, C. M., Smith, L. B. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=The+faces+in+infant-perspective+scenes+change+over+the+first+year+of+life.">The faces in infant-perspective scenes change over the first year of life.</a> PlOS ONE. 10 (5), e0123780 (2015).</li><li>Fausey, C. M., Jayaraman, S., Smith, L. B. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=From+faces+to+hands:+Changing+visual+input+in+the+first+two+years.">From faces to hands: Changing visual input in the first two years.</a> Cognition. 152, 101-107 (2016).</li><li>Jayaraman, S., Fausey, C. M., Smith, L. B. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=Why+are+faces+denser+in+the+visual+experiences+of+younger+than+older+infants?.">Why are faces denser in the visual experiences of younger than older infants?.</a> Developmental Psychology. 53 (1), 38 (2017).</li><li>Clerkin, E. M., Hart, E., Rehg, J. M., Yu, C., Smith, L. B. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Search&doptcmdl=Citation&defaultField=Title+Word&term=Real-world+visual+statistics+and+infants'+first-learned+object+names.">Real-world visual statistics and infants' first-learned object names.</a> Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Biological Sciences. 372, 20160055 (2017).</li></ol>

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

This paper outlines the basics for applying head-mounted cameras to infants to capture their egocentric visual scene. Commercially available head cameras are sufficient for the vast majority of studies. Small, lightweight, and portable cameras should be incorporated into a soft fabric hat or headband and applied to the child&#39;s head. Once successfully designed and implemented, a variety of experiments can be run, both in laboratory settings as well as in the home environment. From the videos gathered, aggregate data a...

For decades, psychologists have sought to understand the environment of the developing infant, which William James famously described as a &#34;blooming, buzzing confusion1.&#34; The everyday experiences of the infant are typically studied by filming naturalistic play with social partners from a third-person perspective. These views from the side or above typically show cluttered environments and a daunting number of potential referents for any new word an infant hears2. To an outside observer, James&#39;s description is apt, but this stationary, third-person perspective is not the way an infant sees the world. An infant is closer to the ground and can move through their world, bringing objects closer for visual exploration. A third-person view of a parent-infant interaction is illustrated in Figure 1. Highlighted are the fundamental differences between their perspectives. Perhaps, the input that infants receive is not nearly as chaotic as anticipated by parents and researchers. The goal of methods with head-mounted cameras is to capture the infant experience from a first-person view in order to understand the visual environment available to them throughout development.
Head-mounted cameras, worn on a hat or headband, provide a window into the moment-to-moment visual experiences of the developing infant. From this perspective, the study of the structure and regularities in the infant&#39;s environment becomes apparent. Head-mounted cameras have revealed infants&#39; visual experiences to be largely dominated by hands, both their own and their social partner&#39;s, and that face-looks, once considered imperative for establishing joint attention, are much scarcer than anticipated3. Head-mounted cameras have also shown that infants and their caregivers create moments when objects are visually dominant and centered in the infant&#39;s field of view (FOV), reducing the uncertainty inherent to object-label mapping4.
Head-mounted cameras capture the infants&#39; first-person view based on head movements. This view is not perfectly synchronous with, or representative of, infant eye movements, which can only be captured in conjunction with an eye-tracker. For instance, a shift of only the eyes while keeping the head stationary, or a shift of the head while keeping the eyes fixed on an object, will create a misalignment between the infants&#39; actual FOV and the one captured by the head camera. Nonetheless, during toy play, infants typically center the objects they are attending to, aligning their head, eyes, and the location of the toy with their body&#39;s midline5. Misalignments are rare and are typically created by momentary delays between an eye shift and the accompanying head turn3. Therefore, head-cameras are not well suited to capturing the rapid dynamics of shifts in attention. The strength of head-mounted cameras lies in capturing the everyday visual environment, revealing the visual content available to infants.
The following protocol and representative results will demonstrate how head-mounted cameras can be used to study the visual environment of infants and toddlers.

<table><tbody><tr><td>Head-camera</td><td>Looxcie</td><td>Looxcie 3</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Head-camera</td><td>Watec</td><td>WAT-230A</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Head-camera</td><td>Supercircuits</td><td>PC207XP</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Head-camera</td><td>KT&amp;amp;C</td><td>VSN500N</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Head-camera</td><td>SereneLife</td><td>HD Clip-On</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Head-camera</td><td>Conbrov</td><td>Pen TD88</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Head-camera</td><td>Mvowizon</td><td>Smiley Face Spy Button</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Head-camera</td><td>Narrative</td><td>Clip 2</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Head-camera</td><td>MeCam</td><td>DM06</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

a view of their own: capturing the egocentric view of infants and toddlers with head-mounted cameras

Infants and toddlers view the world, at a basic sensory level, in a fundamentally different way from their parents. This is largely due to biological constraints: infants possess different body proportions than their parents and the ability to control their own head movements is less developed. Such constraints limit the visual input available. This protocol aims to provide guiding principles for researchers using head-mounted cameras to understand the changing visual input experienced by the developing infant. Successful use of this protocol will allow researchers to design and execute studies of the developing child&#39;s visual environment set in the home or laboratory. From this method, researchers can compile an aggregate view of all the possible items in a child&#39;s field of view. This method does not directly measure exactly what the child is looking at. By combining this approach with machine learning, computer vision algorithms, and hand-coding, researchers can produce a high-density dataset to illustrate the changing visual ecology of the developing infant.

One simple, yet informative, analysis is to count the number of objects in view at each point in time. Since a head camera produces data at approximately 30 Hz (30 images/s), down-sampling the data to 1 image every 5 s helps to produce a more manageable dataset while maintaining a resolution appropriate for understanding the types of scenes children see. Prior research has demonstrated that visual scenes are slow-changing in infants3. A custom script was used to dr...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras at JoVE.com

A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras

Infants and toddlers view the world in a fundamentally different way from their parents. Head-mounted cameras provide a tractable mechanism to understand the infant visual environment. This protocol provides guiding principles for experiments in the home or laboratory to capture the egocentric view of toddlers and infants.

Infants and toddlers view the world, at a basic sensory level, in a fundamentally different way from their parents. This is largely due to biological ...

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Research

JoVE Journal

Behavior

7.4K Views.  Indiana University. Deze methode kan helpen bij het beantwoorden van belangrijke vragen in de ontwikkelingspsychologie in de cognitieve wetenschappen, zoals wat is de visuele omgeving van zuigelingen en hoe beïnvloedt wat zij zien hun gedrag? Het belangrijkste voordeel van deze techniek is dat het onderzoekers in staat stelt om de mening van een kind vanuit hun eigen perspectief vast te leggen. Deze mening is heel anders dan die van een volwassene.Deze methode kan ook worden toegepast op volwassenen en a...

Video: A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras

Cortical Source Analysis of High-Density EEG Recordings in Children

EEG is traditionally described as a neuroimaging technique with high temporal and low spatial resolution. Recent advances in biophysical modelling and signal processing make it possible to exploit information from other imaging modalities like structural MRI that provide high spatial resolution to overcome this constraint1. This is especially useful for investigations that require high resolution in the temporal as well as spatial domain. In addition, due to the easy application and low cost of EEG recordings, EEG is often the method of choice when working with populations, such as young children, that do not tolerate functional MRI scans well. However, in order to investigate which neural substrates are involved, anatomical information from structural MRI is still needed. Most EEG analysis packages work with standard head models that are based on adult anatomy. The accuracy of these models when used for children is limited2, because the composition and spatial configuration of head tissues changes dramatically over development3.&#160;
In the present paper, we provide an overview of our recent work in utilizing head models based on individual structural MRI scans or age specific head models to reconstruct the cortical generators of high density EEG. This article describes how&#160;EEG recordings are acquired, processed, and analyzed with pediatric populations at the London Baby Lab, including laboratory setup, task design, EEG preprocessing, MRI processing, and EEG channel level and source analysis.&#160;

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in estimating the cortical sources of scalp measured electrical activity for cognitive neuroscience experiments. This article describes how high density EEG is acquired and how recordings are processed for cortical source estimation in children from the age of 2 years at the London Baby Lab.

EEG is traditionally described as a neuroimaging technique with high temporal and low spatial resolution. Recent advances in biophysical modelling and ...

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

Understanding typical and atypical development remains one of the fundamental questions in developmental human neuroscience. Traditionally, experimental paradigms and analysis tools have been limited to constrained laboratory tasks and contexts due to technical limitations imposed by the available set of measuring and analysis techniques and the age of the subjects. These limitations severely limit the study of developmental neural dynamics and associated neural networks engaged in cognition, perception and action in infants performing &#8220;in action and in context&#8221;. This protocol presents a novel approach to study infants and young children as they freely organize their own behavior, and its consequences in a complex, partly unpredictable and highly dynamic environment. The proposed methodology integrates synchronized high-density active scalp electroencephalography (EEG), inertial measurement units (IMUs), video recording and behavioral analysis to capture brain activity and movement non-invasively in freely-behaving infants. This setup allows for the study of neural network dynamics in the developing brain, in action and context, as these networks are recruited during goal-oriented, exploration and social interaction tasks.

This protocol presents a novel methodology for the neural decoding of intent from freely-behaving infants during unscripted social interaction with an actor. Neural activity is acquired using non-invasive high-density active scalp electroencephalography (EEG). Kinematic data is collected with inertial measurement units and supplemented with synchronized video recording.

Understanding typical and atypical development remains one of the fundamental questions in developmental human neuroscience. Traditionally, experimental ...

Eye Tracking Young Children with Autism

The rise of accessible commercial eye-tracking systems has fueled a rapid increase in their use in psychological and psychiatric research. By providing a direct, detailed and objective measure of gaze behavior, eye-tracking has become a valuable tool for examining abnormal perceptual strategies in clinical populations and has been used to identify disorder-specific characteristics1, promote early identification2, and inform treatment3. In particular, investigators of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have benefited from integrating eye-tracking into their research paradigms4-7. Eye-tracking has largely been used in these studies to reveal mechanisms underlying impaired task performance8 and abnormal brain functioning9, particularly during the processing of social information1,10-11. While older children and adults with ASD comprise the preponderance of research in this area, eye-tracking may be especially useful for studying young children with the disorder as it offers a non-invasive tool for assessing and quantifying early-emerging developmental abnormalities2,12-13. Implementing eye-tracking with young children with ASD, however, is associated with a number of unique challenges, including issues with compliant behavior resulting from specific task demands and disorder-related psychosocial considerations. In this protocol, we detail methodological considerations for optimizing research design, data acquisition and psychometric analysis while eye-tracking young children with ASD. The provided recommendations are also designed to be more broadly applicable for eye-tracking children with other developmental disabilities. By offering guidelines for best practices in these areas based upon lessons derived from our own work, we hope to help other investigators make sound research design and analysis choices while avoiding common pitfalls that can compromise data acquisition while eye-tracking young children with ASD or other developmental difficulties.

Eye tracking has long been used to study gaze patterns in typically-developing individuals, but recent technological advancements have made its use with clinical populations, including autism, more feasible. While eye-tracking young children with autism can offer insight into early symptom manifestations, it involves methodological challenges. Suggestions for best practices are provided.

The rise of accessible commercial eye-tracking systems has fueled a rapid increase in their use in psychological and psychiatric research. By providing a ...

Medicine

Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL): Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

One of the defining characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is difficulty with language and communication.1 Children with ASD's onset of speaking is usually delayed, and many children with ASD consistently produce language less frequently and of lower lexical and grammatical complexity than their typically developing (TD) peers.6,8,12,23 However, children with ASD also exhibit a significant social deficit, and researchers and clinicians continue to debate the extent to which the deficits in social interaction account for or contribute to the deficits in language production.5,14,19,25
Standardized assessments of language in children with ASD usually do include a comprehension component; however, many such comprehension tasks assess just one aspect of language (e.g., vocabulary),5 or include a significant motor component (e.g., pointing, act-out), and/or require children to deliberately choose between a number of alternatives. These last two behaviors are known to also be challenging to children with ASD.7,12,13,16
We present a method which can assess the language comprehension of young typically developing children (9-36 months) and children with autism.2,4,9,11,22 This method, Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (P-IPL), projects side-by-side video images from a laptop onto a portable screen. The video images are paired first with a 'baseline' (nondirecting) audio, and then presented again paired with a 'test' linguistic audio that matches only one of the video images. Children's eye movements while watching the video are filmed and later coded. Children who understand the linguistic audio will look more quickly to, and longer at, the video that matches the linguistic audio.2,4,11,18,22,26
This paradigm includes a number of components that have recently been miniaturized (projector, camcorder, digitizer) to enable portability and easy setup in children's homes. This is a crucial point for assessing young children with ASD, who are frequently uncomfortable in new (e.g., laboratory) settings. Videos can be created to assess a wide range of specific components of linguistic knowledge, such as Subject-Verb-Object word order, wh-questions, and tense/aspect suffixes on verbs; videos can also assess principles of word learning such as a noun bias, a shape bias, and syntactic bootstrapping.10,14,17,21,24 Videos include characters and speech that are visually and acoustically salient and well tolerated by children with ASD.

Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking IPL: Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

A reliable home-based way to assess the language comprehension of very young typically developing children, as well as those with autism, is described. The method analyzes children's eye gaze while viewing side-by-side images but hearing an audio that matches only one image. Stimuli are designed with young participants in mind.

One  of the defining characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is difficulty  with language and communication.1  Children with ASD's onset of ...

Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior

Young children's visual environments are dynamic, changing moment-by-moment as children physically and visually explore spaces and objects and interact with people around them. Head-mounted eye tracking offers a unique opportunity to capture children's dynamic egocentric views and how they allocate visual attention within those views. This protocol provides guiding principles and practical recommendations for researchers using head-mounted eye trackers in both laboratory and more naturalistic settings. Head-mounted eye tracking complements other experimental methods by enhancing opportunities for data collection in more ecologically valid contexts through increased portability and freedom of head and body movements compared to screen-based eye tracking. This protocol can also be integrated with other technologies, such as motion tracking and heart-rate monitoring, to provide a high-density multimodal dataset for examining natural behavior, learning, and development than previously possible. This paper illustrates the types of data generated from head-mounted eye tracking in a study designed to investigate visual attention in one natural context for toddlers: free-flowing toy play with a parent. Successful use of this protocol will allow researchers to collect data that can be used to answer questions not only about visual attention, but also about a broad range of other perceptual, cognitive, and social skills and their development.

Young children do not passively observe the world, but rather actively explore and engage with their environment. This protocol provides guiding principles and practical recommendations for using head-mounted eye trackers to record infants' and toddlers' dynamic visual environments and visual attention in the context of natural behavior.

Young children's visual environments are dynamic, changing moment-by-moment as children physically and visually explore spaces and objects and interact ...

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Assessing infant category learning is a challenging but vital aspect of studying infant cognition. By employing a familiarization-test paradigm, we straightforwardly measure infants&#8217; success in learning a novel category while relying only on their looking behavior. Moreover, the paradigm can directly measure the impact of different auditory signals on the infant categorization across a range of ages. For instance, we assessed how 2-year-olds learn categories in a variety of labeling environments: in our task, 2-year-olds successfully learned categories when all exemplars were labeled&#160;or the first two exemplars were labeled, but they failed to categorize when no exemplars were labeled or only the final two exemplars were labeled. To determine infants&#8217; success in such tasks, researchers can examine both the overall preference displayed by infants in each condition and infants&#8217; pattern of looking over the course of the test phase, using an eye-tracker to provide fine-grained time-course data. Thus, we present a powerful paradigm for identifying the role of language, or any auditory signal, in infants&#8217; object category learning.

Here we present a protocol for familiarization-test paradigms which provide a direct test of infant categorization and help to define the role of language in early category learning.

Assessing infant category learning is a challenging but vital aspect of studying infant cognition. By employing a familiarization-test paradigm, we ...

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

We discuss the use of the preferential looking paradigm in eye tracking studies in order to study how infants develop, understand, and attend to the world around them. Eye tracking is a safe and non-invasive way to collect gaze data from infants, and the preferential looking paradigm is simple to design and only requires the infant to be attending to the screen. By simultaneously showing two visual stimuli that differ in one dimension, we can assess whether infants show different looking behavior for either stimulus, thus demonstrating sensitivity to that difference. The challenges in such experimental approaches are that experiments must be kept brief (no more than 10 min) and be carefully controlled such that the two stimuli differ in only one way. The interpretation of null results must also be carefully considered. In this paper, we illustrate a successful example of an infant eye tracking study with a preferential looking paradigm to discover that 6-month-olds are sensitive to linguistic cues in a signed language despite having no prior exposure to signed language, suggesting that infants possess intrinsic or innate sensitivities to these cues.

Eye tracking studies using a preferential looking paradigm can be used to study infants&#39;&#160;emerging understanding of, and attention to, their external visual world.

We discuss the use of the preferential looking paradigm in eye tracking studies in order to study how infants develop, understand, and attend to the world ...

Capturing Representative Hand Use at Home Using Egocentric Video in Individuals with Upper Limb Impairment

Impaired hand function after neurological injuries can have a major impact on independence and quality of life. Most existing upper limb assessments are carried out in person, which is not always indicative of hand use in the community. Novel approaches to capture hand function in daily life are required to measure the true impact of rehabilitation interventions. Egocentric video combined with computer vision for automated analysis has been proposed to evaluate hand use at home. However, there are limitations to the duration of continuous recordings. We present a protocol designed to ensure that the videos obtained are representative of daily routines while respecting participant privacy. 
A representative recording schedule is selected through a collaborative process between the researchers and participants, to ensure that the videos capture natural tasks and performance, while being useful for hand assessment. Use of the equipment and procedures is demonstrated to the participants. A total of 3 h of video recordings are scheduled over two weeks. To reduce privacy concerns, participants have full control to start and stop recordings, and the opportunity to edit the videos before returning them to the research team. Reminders are provided, as well as help calls and home visits if necessary. 
The protocol was tested with 9 stroke survivors and 14 individuals with cervical spinal cord injury. The videos obtained contained a variety of activities, such as meal preparation, dishwashing, and knitting. An average of 3.11 &plusmn; 0.98 h of video were obtained. The recording periods varied from 12-69 d, due to illness or unexpected events in some cases. Data was successfully obtained from twenty-two out of 23 participants, with 6 participants requiring assistance from the investigators during the home recording period. The protocol was effective for collecting videos that contained valuable information about hand function at home after neurological injuries.

A protocol is proposed to capture natural hand function of individuals with hand impairments during their daily routines using an egocentric camera. The goal of the protocol is to ensure that the recordings are representative of an individual&#39;s typical hand use during activities of daily living at home.

Impaired hand function after neurological injuries can have a major impact on independence and quality of life. Most existing upper limb assessments are ...

Bioengineering

Quantified Assessment of Infant's Gross Motor Abilities Using a Multisensor Wearable

Developing objective and quantitative methods of early gross motor assessment is essential to better understand neurodevelopment and to support early therapeutic interventions. Here, we&#160;present&#160;a method to quantify gross motor performance using a multisensor wearable, MAIJU (Motility Assessment of Infants with a JUmpsuit), which offers an automated, scalable,&#160;quantitative, and objective assessment using&#160;a fully automated cloud-based pipeline. This wearable suit is equipped with four movement sensors that record synchronized data to a mobile phone utilizing a low-energy Bluetooth connection. An offline analysis in the cloud server generates fully analyzed results within minutes for each recording. These results include a graphical report of the recording session and a detailed result matrix that gives second-by-second classifications for posture, movement, infant carrying, and free playtime. Our recent results show the virtue of such&#160;quantified motor assessment&#160;providing&#160;a potentially&#160;effective method for distinguishing variations in the infant&#39;s gross motor development.

This paper outlines the assessment of infants' gross motor performance with a multisensor wearable and its fully automated deep learning-based analysis pipeline. The method quantifies the posture and movement patterns of infants from lying supine until they master walking independently.

Developing objective and quantitative methods of early gross motor assessment is essential to better understand neurodevelopment and to support early ...

Neuroscience

Real-Life EEG and ECG Synchronization in Infant-Caregiver Interactions

Home-Based EEG Hyperscanning for Infant-Caregiver Social Interactions

Prior hyperscanning studies that record the brain activities of caregivers and children concurrently have primarily been conducted within the confines of the laboratory, thus limiting the generalizability of results to real-life settings. Here, a comprehensive protocol for capturing synchronized electroencephalography (EEG), electrocardiography (ECG), and behavioral recordings from infant-caregiver dyads during various interactive tasks at home is proposed. This protocol demonstrates how to synchronize the different data streams and report EEG data retention rates and quality checks. Additionally, critical issues and possible solutions with respect to the experimental setup, tasks, and data collection in home settings are discussed. The protocol is not limited to infant-caregiver dyads but can be applied to various dyadic constellations. Overall, we demonstrate the flexibility of EEG hyperscanning setups, which allow experiments to be conducted outside of the laboratory to capture participants' brain activities in more ecologically valid environmental settings. Yet, movement and other types of artifacts still constrain the experimental tasks that can be performed in the home setting.

Author Spotlight: Capturing Infant-Caregiver Interactions Through Synchronized Multimodal Data Collection

This protocol describes how synchronized electroencephalography, electrocardiography, and behavioral recordings were captured from infant-caregiver dyads in a home setting.

Prior hyperscanning studies that record the brain activities of caregivers and children concurrently have primarily been conducted within the confines of ...

A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras

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