Doctoral Dissertation Research: Leveraging Intensive Time Series of Accelerometer Data to Assess Impulsivity and Inattention in Preschool Children

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。这个博士论文研究项目将开发和检验一种基于传感器的方法来评估儿童冲动和注意力不集中行为的有效性。了解儿童冲动和疏忽的行为很重要，因为即使在生命的早期，他们也会预测以后的学习成绩和结果，比如成年后的就业、心理健康和药物使用。然而，当前在真实世界环境中评估这些重要行为的方法是有限的，因为它们是主观的、不精确的和资源密集型的。该项目将开发一种客观、准确的评估方法，参与者负担较低，并能够全天持续评估行为。在这个项目中开发的方法将对来自不同领域的应用研究人员具有价值，包括教育、儿科学、发展和临床心理学。该项目的代码和未识别的数据将向更广泛的社区提供。研究人员将从德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的不同学生群体中招募和指导本科生研究助理。该研究项目将开发和检验使用可穿戴加速度计设备来评估儿童在学龄前课堂上的冲动和注意力不集中行为的有效性。学龄前儿童在学校一周内将佩戴加速度计设备。这些设备将每秒记录数据，捕捉儿童参与课堂活动时的复杂运动模式。加速计是传感器的理想选择，因为儿童的冲动和注意力不集中涉及到身体的运动，比如从椅子上站起来，这会在加速计上记录为运动。这些分析将使用验证性和探索性机器学习技术，在密集的加速计数据中识别指示冲动或注意力不集中的模式。分析将超越通常使用的加速度计的运动摘要，而是利用此类摘要丢弃的丰富的运动模式。研究人员将根据现有的儿童冲动和注意力不集中的测量来验证加速度计的方法。该项目的这些成果将促进应用研究，并加强我们对儿童在现实世界环境中行为的理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This doctoral dissertation research project will develop and examine the validity of a sensor-based approach for assessing children's impulsive and inattentive behaviors. Understanding children's impulsive and inattentive behaviors is important because, even early in life, they predict later academic achievement and outcomes as diverse as employment, mental health, and substance use in adulthood. However, current methods to assess these important behaviors in real-world contexts are limited because they are subjective, imprecise, and resource intensive. This project will develop an objective, precise method of assessment with low-participant burden and the ability to assess behavior continually throughout the day. The approach developed in this project will be of value to applied researchers from a variety of fields, including education, pediatrics, and developmental and clinical psychology. Code and de-identified data from the project will be made available to the broader community. The investigators will recruit and mentor undergraduate research assistants from the diverse student body at the University of Texas at Austin.This research project will develop and examine the validity of using wearable accelerometer devices to assess children's impulsive and inattentive behaviors in their preschool classrooms. Preschool-aged children will wear accelerometer devices while at school for one week. The devices will record data each second, capturing complex patterns of movement as children engage in classroom activities. Accelerometers are an ideal choice of sensor because children's impulsivity and inattention involve physical movement, such as getting up from one's chair, that will register as movement on the accelerometers. The analyses will use confirmatory and exploratory machine learning techniques to identify patterns in the intensive accelerometer data that index impulsivity or inattention. Analyses will go beyond the commonly used summaries of movement from accelerometers and instead take advantage of the rich patterns of movement that such summaries discard. The investigators will validate the accelerometer approach against existing measures of children's impulsivity and inattention. These results of this project will facilitate applied research and enhance our understanding of children's behavior in their real-world environments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.