Measuring Active Vision in Toddlers and Young Children

描述(申请人提供)：了解学习环境中的规律性，个人之间的差异，以及个人如何通过自己的行为创造这些差异，对于理解典型和非典型的发展过程，制定补救和干预程序至关重要。本研究为从第一人称视角研究婴幼儿动态视觉环境提供了一种新的方法。进展受到几个技术问题的限制，包括：(1)幼儿可以容忍的记录设备，以及(2)眼睛、头部和身体运动的独立自由度的数量。我们相信我们可以解决这些技术问题。这项研究的目标是研究10至36个月大的儿童的主动视觉，该研究有三个具体目标：(1)开发一种系统，通过该系统，人们可以测量动态的第一人称视野(通过儿童头部上的一个小摄像头)，眼睛在该区域的注视方向(通过附加的摄像头和跟踪眼睛位置的软件)，以及头部、手和身体的运动(通过放置在头、肩和手上的位置传感器)；(2)确定头部摄像头图像相对于儿童知觉领域的空间和时间分辨率；(3)演示该系统在两种不同的任务环境中的效用和功能--母婴玩具在桌子前玩耍和自由活动的游戏。这一新方法承诺在三维物理和社交世界的背景下，对学习环境和动态视觉过程的发展提供基本的新见解，儿童在这种背景下建立社交、语言和认知技能。拟议的新方法对于注意力障碍的早期发现、研究其在社会、认知和语言发展中的连锁后果以及开发适用于复杂自然环境的新疗法和干预措施具有重要的生物医学意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Understanding the regularities in the learning environment, how they differ among individuals, and how individuals through their own behaviors create those differences are essential to understanding typical and atypical courses of development, to developing remediation and intervention procedures. The proposed research develops a new method to study the dynamic visual environment of infants and toddlers, from the first-person view. Progress has been limited by several technical problems including: (1) recording devices that will be tolerated by young children and (2) the number of independent degrees of freedom in eye, head, and body movements. We believe we can solve these technical problems. The research has three specific aims within the goal of studying active vision in children 10 to 36 months of age: (1) to develop a system through which one can measure the dynamic first-person visual field (via a small camera on the head of the child), the direction of eye gaze in that field (via additional cameras and software that track eye position), and also head, hand and body movements (via position sensors placed on the head, shoulders and hands); (2) to determine the spatial and temporal resolution of the head-camera image relative to the child's perceptual field; (3) to demonstrate the utility and functionality of the system in two different task contexts - mother-infant toy play at a table and free play with ambulatory movements. This new method promises fundamental new insights about the learning environment and the development of dynamic visual processes in the context of a 3-dimensional physical and social world, the context in which children build social, language and cognitive skills. The proposed new method has significant biomedical relevance for the early detection of attentional disorders, for studying their cascading consequences in social, cognitive and linguistic development, and for developing new therapies and interventions that generalize to the complex natural environment