SCC-PG: Closed-loop Intervention to Promote a Supportive and Interactive Environment around Children

对于父母和教育工作者来说，监控和调整他们的行为，以确保孩子发展适当的亲社会和学习行为，是养成和限制设置之间的复杂平衡。当这些相互作用变得紧张时，可能会出现负面或强制性的循环，从而延迟适当的发育并加剧现有的损害。要破坏强迫循环的发展，成年人必须有能力准确地评估他们与儿童互动的质量，并将这些信息整合到个人改变中。衡量这些类型互动的方法将使我们了解在STEM学习环境中儿童社交、情绪和学习发展的机制，并使我们能够在最需要支持的时刻创建适应性干预措施。该项目设想了一个闭环干预框架，以促进儿童周围的支持性和互动性环境。智能可穿戴设备将感知孩子与他们的父母或教育工作者之间的互动和反应，使用嵌入式机器学习技术来识别支持行为。感知到的行为将被发送到云服务器，在那里将从在线心理咨询或人工智能中识别自适应互动策略。这些互动策略将以指导线索的形式提供给家长和教育工作者，以促进儿童周围的支持性STEM学习环境。本规划项目旨在了解在STEM学习环境中实施智能技术和心理策略以支持成人与儿童互动的障碍和关键问题。这项工作将通过召集主要利益相关者(家长组织、正式教育机构和非正式教育机构)进行一系列迭代讨论来制定一套对儿童的社交、情感和学习技能发展至关重要的成人-儿童行为目标。然后，进一步的讨论将确定增强这些行为的机制，并减少相互竞争、效率较低的方法。将使用讨论的定性主题分析来捕捉这些行为和机制。然后将开发技术来测量、提供反馈并改进这些行为。这些设备将与成人-儿童二元体一起试行。这些设备收集的视听数据将被人类编码，并由算法处理，以审查设备检测和响应目标行为的技术能力。将利用一系列关于成人-儿童二人组的汇报访谈和调查来确定这些设备的可行性、可接受性和实用性。收集的初步数据将支持关键的技术和社会科学研究问题的形成，这些问题相互启发：关于成人和儿童之间的社会参与的问题将推动技术研究，而通过技术研究可以发现的将打开关于儿童和成人之间的社会参与的新问题。成人与儿童的互动是整合学生社交、情感和学业成果的关键社会因素。在我们的非正式教育社区、正式教育社区和家庭社区中，找到衡量、提供反馈和改善这些互动的最佳机制至关重要。因此，这项工作试图推进一种新的方法，并以证据为基础理解STEM学习的发展。这一智能互联社区项目还得到了推进非正式STEM学习计划的支持，该计划旨在：(A)促进对非正式环境中STEM学习设计和开发的新方法和基于证据的理解；(B)为扩大获得和参与STEM学习体验提供多种途径；(C)推进对非正式环境中STEM学习的创新研究和评估；以及(D)让所有年龄段的公众在非正式环境中学习STEM。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。

For both parents and educators, monitoring and adjusting their behaviors to ensure that children develop appropriate prosocial and learning behaviors is a complex balance between nurturance and limit setting. When these interactions are strained, negative or coercive cycles may emerge that delay appropriate development and exacerbate existing impairment. To disrupt the development of coercive cycles, adults must have the ability to accurately assess the quality of their interactions with children and integrate this information into personal change. Approaches to measuring these types of interactions will inform what we know about the mechanisms of child social, emotional, and learning development in STEM learning settings, and enable the creation of adaptive interventions for those moments when support is most needed. This project envisions a closed-loop intervention framework to promote a supportive and interactive environment around children. Smart wearables will sense interaction and responses between the children and their parents or educators, using embedded machine learning technology to recognize supportive behaviors. The perceived behaviors will be sent to a cloud server where adaptive interaction strategies will be identified from either online psychological consultation or artificial intelligence. These interaction strategies will then be provided to the parents and educators in the form of guidance cues to promote a supportive STEM learning environment around the children.This planning project aims to understand the barriers and critical problems in the implementation of smart technology and psychological strategies to support adult-child interactions in STEM learning settings. The work will proceed by convening key stakeholders (parent organizations, formal educational institutions, and informal educational institutions) in a series of iterative discussions to produce a set of adult-child behavioral targets that are essential to children’s development of social, emotional, and learning skills. Further discussions will then identify mechanisms to enhance these behaviors, and reduce competing, less effective approaches. Qualitative thematic analysis of the discussions will be used to capture these behaviors and mechanisms. Then technologies will be developed to measure, provide feedback on, and improve these behaviors. These devices will be piloted with adult-child dyads. Audiovisual data collected by the devices will be human coded as well as processed by algorithms to vet the technological capacity of the devices to detect and respond to targeted behaviors. A series of debriefing interviews and surveys with adult-child dyads will be used to determine the feasibility, acceptability, and utility of the devices. The collected preliminary data will support the forming of critical technological and social science research questions that co-inform one another: questions about the social engagement between adults and children will drive the technical research, and what can be discovered via the technological research will open up new questions that can be posed about social engagement between children and adults. Adult-child interactions are key social factors that integrate to produce student social, emotional, and academic outcomes. Within our informal educational communities, our formal educational communities, and our familial communities it is essential to find the best mechanisms for measuring, providing feedback, and improving these interactions. This work thus seeks to advance a new approach to, and evidence-based understanding of, the development of STEM learning. This Smart and Connected Communities project is also supported by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal 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.