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 border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="626">
	<tbody>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Head-camera</td>
			<td style="width:79px;">Looxcie</td>
			<td style="width:165px;">Looxcie 3</td>
			<td style="width:167px;"></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Head-camera</td>
			<td>Watec</td>
			<td>WAT-230A</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Head-camera</td>
			<td>Supercircuits</td>
			<td>PC207XP</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Head-camera</td>
			<td>KT&#38;C</td>
			<td>VSN500N</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Head-camera</td>
			<td>SereneLife</td>
			<td>HD Clip-On</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Head-camera</td>
			<td>Conbrov</td>
			<td>Pen TD88</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Head-camera</td>
			<td>Mvowizon</td>
			<td>Smiley Face Spy Button</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Head-camera</td>
			<td>Narrative</td>
			<td style="width:165px;">Clip 2</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:216px;">Head-camera</td>
			<td>MeCam</td>
			<td style="width:165px;">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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Behavior

7.3K Views.  Indiana University. 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.

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

Assessment and Evaluation of the High Risk Neonate: The NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale

There has been a long-standing interest in the assessment of the neurobehavioral integrity of the newborn infant. The NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS) was developed as an assessment for the at-risk infant. These are infants who are at increased risk for poor developmental outcome because of insults during prenatal development, such as substance exposure or prematurity or factors such as poverty, poor nutrition or lack of prenatal care that can have adverse effects on the intrauterine environment and affect the developing fetus. The NNNS assesses the full range of infant neurobehavioral performance including neurological integrity, behavioral functioning, and signs of stress/abstinence. The NNNS is a noninvasive neonatal assessment tool with demonstrated validity as a predictor, not only of medical outcomes such as cerebral palsy diagnosis, neurological abnormalities, and diseases with risks to the brain, but also of developmental outcomes such as mental and motor functioning, behavior problems, school readiness, and IQ. The NNNS can identify infants at high risk for abnormal developmental outcome and is an important clinical tool that enables medical researchers and health practitioners to identify these infants and develop intervention programs to optimize the development of these infants as early as possible. The video shows the NNNS procedures, shows examples of normal and abnormal performance and the various clinical populations in which the exam can be used.

The NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS) was developed as an assessment for the at-risk infant. The purpose of this article is to describe the NNNS, provide video examples of the NNNS procedures and discuss the ways in which the exam has been used.

There has been a long-standing interest in the assessment of the neurobehavioral integrity of the newborn infant.  The NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale ...

P50 Sensory Gating in Infants

Attentional deficits are common in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders including attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, autism, bipolar mood disorder, and schizophrenia. There has been increasing interest in the neurodevelopmental components of these attentional deficits; neurodevelopmental meaning that while the deficits become clinically prominent in childhood or adulthood, the deficits are the results of problems in brain development that begin in infancy or even prenatally. Despite this interest, there are few methods for assessing attention very early in infancy. This report focuses on one method, infant auditory P50 sensory gating.
Attention has several components. One of the earliest components of attention, termed sensory gating, allows the brain to tune out repetitive, noninformative sensory information. Auditory P50 sensory gating refers to one task designed to measure sensory gating using changes in EEG. When identical auditory stimuli are presented 500 ms apart, the evoked response (change in the EEG associated with the processing of the click) to the second stimulus is generally reduced relative to the response to the first stimulus (i.e. the response is &#34;gated&#34;). When response to the second stimulus is not reduced, this is considered a poor sensory gating, is reflective of impaired cerebral inhibition, and is correlated with attentional deficits.
Because the auditory P50 sensory gating task is passive, it is of potential utility in the study of young infants and may provide a window into the developmental time course of attentional deficits in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders. The goal of this presentation is to describe the methodology for assessing infant auditory P50 sensory gating, a methodology adapted from those used in studies of adult populations.

Methods to record auditory P50 sensory gating, a physiological marker of cerebral inhibition which reflects early stages of attention, are described.

Attentional deficits are common in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders including attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, autism, bipolar mood ...

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Task-specific actions emerge from spontaneous movement during infancy. It has been proposed that task-specific actions emerge through a discovery-learning process. Here a method is described in which 3-4 month old infants learn a task by discovery and their leg movements are captured to quantify the learning process. This discovery-learning task uses an infant activated mobile that rotates and plays music based on specified leg action of infants. Supine infants activate the mobile by moving their feet vertically across a virtual threshold. This paradigm is unique in that as infants independently discover that their leg actions activate the mobile, the infants&#8217; leg movements are tracked using a motion capture system allowing for the quantification of the learning process. Specifically, learning is quantified in terms of the duration of mobile activation, the position variance of the end effectors (feet) that activate the mobile, changes in hip-knee coordination patterns, and changes in hip and knee muscle torque. This information describes infant exploration and exploitation at the interplay of person and environmental constraints that support task-specific action. Subsequent research using this method can investigate how specific impairments of different populations of infants at risk for movement disorders influence the discovery-learning process for task-specific action.

A method is described in which 3-4 month old infants learn a task by discovery and their leg movements are captured to quantify the learning process.

Task-specific actions emerge from spontaneous movement during infancy. It has been proposed that task-specific actions emerge through a discovery-learning ...

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 ...

The Other End of the Leash: An Experimental Test to Analyze How Owners Interact with Their Pet Dogs

It has been suggested that the way in which owners interact with their dogs can largely vary and influence the dog-owner bond, but very few objective studies, so far, have addressed how the owner interacts with the dog. The goal of the present study was to record dog owners&#39; interaction styles by means of objective observation and coding. The experiment included eight standardized situations in which owners of pet dogs were asked to perform specific tasks including both positive (i.e. playing, teaching a new task, showing a preference towards an object in a food searching task, greeting after separation) and potentially distressing tasks (i.e. physical restriction during DNA sampling, putting a T-shirt onto the dog, giving basic obedience commands while the dog was distracted). The video recordings were coded off-line using a specifically designed coding scheme including scores for communication, social support, warmth, enthusiasm, and play style, as well as frequency of behaviors like petting, praising, commands, and attention sounds. Exploratory Factor Analysis of the 20 variables measured revealed 3 factors, labeled as Owner Warmth, Owner Social Support, and Owner Control, which can be viewed as analogues to parenting style dimensions. The experimental procedure introduced here represents the first standardized measure of interaction styles of dog owners. The methodology presented here is a useful tool to investigate individual variation in the interaction style of pet dog owners that can be used to explain differences in the dog-human relationship, dogs&#39; behavioral outcomes, and dogs stress coping strategies, all crucial elements both from a theoretical and applied point of view.

This article presents eight different experimental tasks, mirroring the everyday life of dogs and owners, used to analyze how owners interact with their dogs in a standardized way. The tasks included both positive (e.g. play) and negative (potentially stressful) situations (e.g. physical restriction).

It has been suggested that the way in which owners interact with their dogs can largely vary and influence the dog-owner bond, but very few objective ...

Methodology for Establishing a Community-Wide Life Laboratory for Capturing Unobtrusive and Continuous Remote Activity and Health Data

An end-to-end suite of technologies has been established for the unobtrusive and continuous monitoring of health and activity changes occurring in the daily life of older adults over extended periods of time. The technology is aggregated into a system that incorporates the principles of being minimally obtrusive, while generating secure, privacy protected, continuous objective data in real-world (home-based) settings for months to years. The system includes passive infrared presence sensors placed throughout the home, door contact sensors installed on exterior doors, connected physiological monitoring devices (such as scales), medication boxes, and wearable actigraphs. Driving sensors are also installed in participants' cars and computer (PC, tablet or smartphone) use is tracked. Data is annotated via frequent online self-report options that provide vital information with regard to the data that is difficult to infer via sensors such as internal states (e.g., pain, mood, loneliness), as well as data referent to activity pattern interpretation (e.g., visitors, rearranged furniture). Algorithms have been developed using the data obtained to identify functional domains key to health or disease activity monitoring, including mobility (e.g., room transitions, steps, gait speed), physiologic function (e.g., weight, body mass index, pulse), sleep behaviors (e.g., sleep time, trips to the bathroom at night), medication adherence (e.g., missed doses), social engagement (e.g., time spent out of home, time couples spend together), and cognitive function (e.g., time on computer, mouse movements, characteristics of online form completion, driving ability). Change detection of these functions provides a sensitive marker for the application in health surveillance of acute illnesses (e.g., viral epidemic) to the early detection of prodromal dementia syndromes. The system is particularly suitable for monitoring the efficacy of clinical interventions in natural history studies of geriatric syndromes and in clinical trials.

Unobtrusive sensors and pervasive computing technology incorporated into the daily home life of older adults enables meaningful health and activity changes to be recorded continuously for months to years, providing ecologically valid, high frequency, multi-domain data for research or clinical use.

An end-to-end suite of technologies has been established for the unobtrusive and continuous monitoring of health and activity changes occurring in the ...

Use of a Video Scoring Anchor for Rapid Serial Assessment of Social Communication in Toddlers

Reciprocal social behavior (RSB), an early-emerging capacity to engage in social contingency&#8212;which is foundational for both social learning and social competency&#8212;is hypothesized to be disrupted in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The ability to quantify the full range of RSB during the toddler period, when core symptoms of ASD often arise, is pivotal for evaluating early risk for ASD, characterizing social development, and tracking response to early interventions. However, important parameters of variation in RSB&#8212;especially prior to the development of verbal language&#8212;can be nuanced and difficult to characterize using questionnaire-based methods. To address this challenge, we developed a system for measuring quantitative variation in RSB in toddlers (ages 18 - 30 months) that incorporated not only standard questionnaire data from caregivers but also a novel set of video-referenced items, through which a respondent compares the behavior of a subject to that observed in a short video of a young child manifesting a highly competent level of social communication. Testing of this measure in a general population sample of twins confirmed that both the video-referenced items and the RSB Total Score (video-referenced items plus non-video-referenced items) displayed unimodal, continuous distributions, strong internal consistency, marked preservation of individual differences, and extremely high heritability. In addition, video-referenced items were particularly sensitive to quantifying incremental changes in social communication, a major element of RSB, over the course of early childhood development. Scores on the vrRSB clearly differentiated children with and without ASD and these data comprise an initial validation of this promising method for quantifying early RSB&#8212;cross-sectionally, over time, and as a function of early intervention.

Here we present a protocol for administration of the video-referenced rating of reciprocal social behavior (vrRSB) using a paper or online version. This survey quantifies RSB, a prerequisite for social competence, in toddlers through &#34;video-referenced&#34; items whereby a subject is compared to a reference child shown in a three-minute video.

Reciprocal social behavior (RSB), an early-emerging capacity to engage in social contingency&#8212;which is foundational for both social learning and ...

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 ...

Enactive Phenomenological Approach to the Trier Social Stress Test: A Mixed Methods Point of View

The single Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and the TSST for groups (TSST-G) are the most used protocols to experimentally induce psychosocial stress. These tests are based on uncontrollability and social-evaluative threat, inducing psychological and physiological consequences (e.g., anxiety, emotional states, salivary cortisol increases). Many quantitative experimental studies have investigated these stress inducers and these consequences. But, as far as we know, this study is the first to provide a qualitative analysis to access the participants' voices so as to understand the dynamics of their experience throughout the TSST and the TSST-G. This paper outlines a mixed methods approach to the TSST. This approach can help to maximize the information that can be gained from the TSST, which researchers often use without looking more closely at what is qualitatively happening psychologically for participants during the stressor itself. In this way, this protocol is an example of mixed methods, showing the added value of using the enactive phenomenological approach to analyze experimental protocols more deeply. This kind of mixed methods is helpful to access the experience, to understand the actor's point of view, and to analyze in-depth the dynamics of cognitive processes like intentions, perceptions, enacted knowledge, and emotion. The discussion section shows the different uses of a mixed methods protocol, exploiting the enactive phenomenological approach to analyze a protocol or to give a cross vision of the same research subject. This section deals with different existing applications, pointing out some critical steps in this mixed methods approach.

Here, we present an original mixed method combining a quantitative and a qualitative approach to examine accurately participants&#39; experiences during the Trier Social Stress Test and the Trier Social Stress Test for groups.

The single Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and the TSST for groups (TSST-G) are the most used protocols to experimentally induce psychosocial stress. ...

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 ...