Preconference Workshop (8 July, 1:00 – 4:00 PM)

Technological & methodological advances for infant development research “in the wild”

The workshop is for those who want to learn about new technological and methodological options for implementing naturalistic approaches to infant development.

We will introduce recent developments in wearable sensors (EgoActive) that allow the recording of infants’ and caregivers’ egocentric view (head-mounted cameras), synchronised in time with the recordings of cardiac activity and body movement (ECG/Accelerometry body sensors) during typical everyday life situations (i.e., outside the lab).

During the workshop we will be demonstrating how these wearables work and their capabilities in terms of data collection.

We will also demonstrate a series of data processing and analyses approaches (automated and semi-automated algorithms) for extracting multimodal measures relevant to characterising infants’ environment and the development of important cognitive functions (e.g., attention).

We are still working on finalizing the schedule, but roughly, here is the outline:

1. An overview of the naturalistic approach to development;
2. Introduction to the EgoActive platform and how it works (+ time to play with the devices);
3. Approaches to analyzing and characterizing infants’ visual environment (e.g.,  visual features and faces);
4. Methods for analyzing and characterizing infants’ physiological responses in a naturalistic environment;
5. How to use visual and heart beat data to predict and characterize infants’ sustained attention to objects and events in a dynamic natural environment.

Attending the pre-conference workshop is dependent on following the ICIS registration procedures.

All materials from the workshop will be made available for download. Please check back this page for a link. These will be available for everyone, so in case you cannot attend the workshop, we hope they will provide useful info.