The aims of this proposal are to fully develop and validate the SmartPlayroom as a powerful automated data collection and analysis tool in developmental research. This room looks like any playroom in a home or school but is designed to naturalistically collect data in real time and simultaneously on all aspects of children's behavior. Behaviors include movement kinematics, language, eye movements, and social interaction while a child performs naturalistic tasks, plays and explores without instruction, walks or crawls, and interacts with a caregiver. The space is equipped with mobile eye tracking, wireless physiological heart rate and galvanic skin response sensors, audio and video recording, and depth sensor technologies. Funding is requested to demonstrate the scientific advantage of naturalistic measurement using an example from visual attention research (Aim 1), and in the process, to provide data to further develop flexible computer vision algorithms for automated behavioral analysis for use in 4-9 year-old children (Aim 2). By combining fine-grained sensor data with high-throughput automated computer vision and machine learning tools, we will be able to automate quantitative data collection and analysis in the SmartPlayroom for use in addressing myriad developmental questions. The SmartPlayroom approach overcomes completely the limitations of task-based experimentation in developmental research, offering quantitative precision in the collection of ecologically valid data. It has the power to magnify both construct validity and measurement reliability in developmental research. The investigators are committed to making freely available our data, computer vision algorithms, and discoveries so that we might move the field forward quickly.
We focus this work on developing and validating a novel and innovative data collection space called the SmartPlayroom, designed to pair naturalistic exploration and action with the precision of computerized automated data collection and analysis. This proposal aims to demonstrate the scientific advantage of naturalistic measurement, and in the process, to provide data to further develop flexible computer vision algorithms for automated behavioral analysis for use with 4-9 year-old children in the SmartPlayroom. !
