A large-scale behavior corpus including multi-angle video data for observing infants' long-term developmental processes

Abstract

We have developed a method for multimodal observation of infant development. In order to analyze development of problem solving skills by observing scenes of task achievement or communication with others, we have introduced a method for extracting detailed behavioral features expressed by gestures or eyes. We have realized an environment for recording behavior of the same infants continuously as multi-angle video. The environment has evolved into a practical infrastructure through the following four steps; (1) Establish an infant school and study the camera arrangement.(2) Obtain participants in the school who agree with the project purpose and start to hold regular classes. (3) Begin to construct a multimodal infant behavior corpus with considering observation methods. (4) Practice development process analyses using the corpus. We have constructed a support tool for observing a huge amount of video data which increases with age. The system has contributed to enrich the corpus with annotations from multimodal viewpoints about infant development. With a focus on the demonstrative expression as a fundamental human behavior, we have extracted 240 scenes from the video during 10 months and observed them. The analysis results have revealed interesting findings about the developmental changes in infants' gestures and eyes, and indicated the effectiveness of the proposed observation method.

Child selection of learning methods

“…Further discussion of annotation principles and hardships we encountered is presented in [2]. Annotation schemata specific for learning methods analysis is presented in the next chapter, Chapter 4 illustrates an example scene, and Chapter 5 contains validity discussion and conclusions.…”

“…We have built an infant-parent learning environment [2][8] for [1][2][3][4][5][6] year old children, where child-parent pairs attend classes centered on various tasks. The infants also have a chance for free play with or without adult presence.…”