Changing the game: Design and evaluation of mobile and biowearable technologies to support children's emotion regulation skills development in everyday life

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In Canada alone, about one in five adults live with mental illness. Half of these lifelong mental health disorders are established by the age of 14. Less than 20% of these young people receive adequate treatment. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated this problem. Emotion regulation is a fundamental life skill with long-term positive impacts on various mental health disorders, well-being, adjustment and academic performance. Learning to regulate in early childhood has lifelong advantages. Learning emotion regulation involves understanding how cognitive and/or behavioral strategies can be used to modify emotional experiences. For example, redeploying attention away from a stressor or relaxing the body to modify an anxiety response. Skills development is challenging because it requires practice of psychomotor strategies in safe emotionally evocative situations; involves internal processes that are difficult to articulate; and needs supports to transfer skills from training sessions into everyday life. My past research (NSERC Discovery & Accelerator) provided evidence that mobile-biowearable computing technologies offer accessible solutions to these challenges through: 1) artificially generating emotionally evocative practice scenarios (using games, smart toys); 2) child-specific biofeedback on internal regulation processes; and 3) mobile delivery of personalized in-situ supports. Our research team was the first to develop a mobile-neurofeedback game platform with real-time personalization for children aged 5 to 10. We studied our system in mid-term deployments (Nepal, Canada), including children of mixed genders, cultures and socio-economic classes to ensure generalizability and promote diversity and inclusion. These preliminary studies showed viability, mixed results around efficacy and revealed key socio-technological factors to consider in new investigations in this design space. In this new proposal we uniquely combine theories of emotion regulation with embodied and situated learning to propose a child-centric model that conceptualizes regulation as a psychomotor skill. We use this model to identify interaction mechanisms that may result in significant gains in skills development. We will develop innovative enabling technologies that instantiate these interaction mechanisms using child-centred design practices. Two different mobile-biowearable systems will be a key outcome of my proposed research program. As in my past research in this space, these systems will be deployed in the field and rigorously evaluated with existing collaborators and community stakeholders. Significant outcomes include new technical and interaction design knowledge. HPQ will be highly involved in this interdisciplinary research at the forefront of designing and evaluating effective and accessible digital mental health supports for diverse groups of children. Results will also inform companies, government agencies and educators working in digital mental health.