Mother-Infant Interaction Kinect Analysis (MIIKA)
Condition: Developmental Disability; Parent Child Relationship
MeSH terms: Developmental Disabilities
Study type: Observational

Summary: 
      An innovative methodology is developed to better understand parent-infant relationships.
      RGB-D sensors (such as Microsoft Kinect) give us the opportunity of online skeleton
      extraction based on the joints architecture of human bodies. These technologies provide
      automatic quantitative information of dyadic play, in order to get micro and macro features
      of the dynamic flow occurring during the interaction. This methodology looks at both
      behavioral features and objective measurement of spatial proximity and variations during free
      and structured interactions.
    

Detailed description: 
      RATIONALE:

      Children developmental outcomes are known to be shaped by the early context of care and
      caregiver-infant interaction: an early sensitive caregiving environment provides an optimal
      emotional context for children's early brain maturation. Consequently, the multilayered and
      complex interactional processes occurring between infants and their mothers is of vital
      importance for healthy developmental trajectories. Although mother-infant communication is
      expressed and regulated using multiple modalities, only few studies focused on the role of
      body movements within the dyadic communication. Observational instruments - such as PICCOLO
      (Parenting Interactions with Children-Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes) - are
      useful to get the outstanding characteristics of the dynamicity and complexity of
      parent-infant relationships, but advances in technology allows us to analyze the flow of
      movements characterizing information exchanges in the bidirectional process of the
      parent-infant relationship. Spatial proximity is a core aspect of early dyadic relationships.
      The temporal and spatial reliability of automatic and computational methods, together with
      the decreasing costs of technology, are paving the way to the intersection of behavioral and
      technological techniques in both clinical and research fields. Nevertheless, to the best of
      our knowledge, kinematic full skeleton registration of mother-infant interaction in a
      free-play setting with children 18-36 months has not yet been explored both in at-typical and
      atypical development dyads. Indeed, previous studies assessed social interactions using
      automatic and computational methods, but mostly focusing on gesture and posture, gaze and
      mimics, quantity of body, facial and hand movements.

      SPECIFIC AIM 1: To identify spatial proximity features during free and structured dyadic
      interaction of typical development dyads and its association with mother and infant
      characteristics EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN AIM 1: mother-infant dyads will be asked to play within a
      specific perimeter that correspond to the detection area of Microsoft Kinect. The play
      session is divided into 3 phases: (1) free play. Some standard toys are positioned on the
      floor. (2) tower-task: mother and child are asked to play in order to build a tower with some
      cubes. (3) Empathy task: the mother is asked to pretend to hurt herself until a "stop" signal
      from the experimenter. Each session will be videotaped and data from Microsoft Kinect will be
      detected. Mothers will be asked to answer some questionnaires and expert coders will do
      behavioral coding with PICCOLO. Spatial proximity measures will be developed through
      algorithms able to extract, from Kinect row data, measures of approaches and separations of
      the dyad and mother and child's reciprocal contributions SPECIFIC AIM 2: to understand
      differences regarding the use of spatial proximity and reciprocal contributions of mother and
      infant both in typical and atypical dyads EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN AIM 2: children with
      neurodevelopmental disabilities and their mothers will be asked to play in the same setting
      explained in "experimental design 1". Data and proximity patterns that will emerge from
      typical development dyads will be compared to proximity patterns of atypical development
      children dyads, in order to understand how neurodevelopmental disabilities affect
      mother-infant interaction from a spatial and motor point of view.

      SIGNIFICANCE AND INNOVATION Although mother-infant communication is expressed and regulated
      using multiple modalities, only few studies focused on the role of body movements and spatial
      proximity within dyadic communication. This study wants to develop and test an innovative
      methodology based on RGB-D sensors applied to the setting of free parent-infant interaction.
      Automatic quantitative information of the dyad will provide micro and macro features of the
      dynamic flow occurring during the interaction. Thus, automatic quantitative information will
      supplement behavioral assessments, enriching these observations with objective measurement of
      spatial proximity and variations during free and structured interactions.
    

Intervention name(s): Microsoft Kinect Detection during mother child interaction
Intervention type(s): Diagnostic Test
Intervention description(s): methodology based on RGB-D sensors applied to the setting of free parent-infant interaction
Observational model: Case-Control
Time perspective: Cross-Sectional
Sampling method: Non-Probability Sample
Study population: 
        Clinical population is enrolled from the hospital unit. Control population is enrolled from
        kindergarten.
      
Keywords: mother-infant relationship; technologies; disability