Research Methodologies
Advances in ecological measurement.
Novel wearable, mobile methods of neuroimaging and behaviour monitoring have made it possible to measure brain activity (EEG and fNIRS), visual attention (eye-tracking), psychophysiology (GSR, heart rate) and motor and vocal behaviour (wireless accelerometry and microphones) in infants and their social partners during naturalistic social interactions.
With Kind permission from PIPKIN research group and participating families
A dual eye-tracking was built to capture dynamic gaze patterns during interactions of infants or young children and their parents in typical and atypical development.
Wearable and mobile technologies were used to measure brain and behaviour in order to understand the micro-scale structure of social interactions between children and their parents. For example, advanced movement sensors (accelerometers) and microphones were deployed at home and in the lab to measure motor and vocal coordination; and a mobile EEG system was used to study neural oscillations in the infant brain during interactions.
Advances in real-time monitoring.
New analytic techniques and signal-processing algorithms have recently made it possible to access and interpret neuroimaging and eyetracking data in real-time. This has allowed us to conduct ground-breaking experiments in which the child’s brain or eye movements can be recorded and used to shape experimental paradigms on a moment-to-moment basis.
Advances in imaging the social brain.
Advanced experimental paradigms have been used to study selected aspects of functional development of the social brain. For example, we have used these paradigms to trace the emergence of functional specialisation of the temporal lobe over the first 100 hours of life.
Advances in understanding social interactions.
The advent of more precise measures of interactions has revealed the increasing complexity of interactions during development. Microanalytic approaches, which measured duration of individual behaviours during few minutes of an interaction, highlighted the role of temporal structuring of vocalizations, shared attention or action on objects as hallmarks of early communicative behaviour, also indicating the role of joint, dyadic infant-parent activity. In SAPIENS, we move beyond the state-of-the art by incorporating simultaneous measurement of brain and cognition during early social interaction (global and microanalytic observational coding schemes, eye-tracking, movement sensors, neuroimaging).
Enriched samples.
Studying typical and atypical development has allowed to investigate novel theoretical accounts of social brain function. A significant strength of SAPIENS is the inclusion of multiple large heterogenous samples (due to prematurity, infants with higher familial likelihood for Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD, and through systematic health monitoring in community samples). By including these samples, researchers explored how social behaviour emerges and relates to the child’s interactions with their social partners.
Advances in modelling and predicting interacting systems.
SAPIENS has combined expertise and rigorous training in data collection and analysis methodologies with a range of innovative research designs, including twin studies, dense longitudinal sampling, adaptive sampling designs and interventions.
