Design and Development of Instrumented Toys for Social Interactive Assessment of Infant Cognitive Flexibility

Abstract

The first years of an infant’s life represent a sensitive period for neurodevelopment and see the emergence of nascent forms of executive function (EF), which are required to support complex cognition. Few tests exist for measuring EF during infancy, and the available tests require painstaking manual coding of infant behaviour. In modern clinical and research practice, human coders collect data on EF performance by manually labelling video recordings of infant behaviour during toy or social interaction. Besides being extremely time-consuming, video annotation is known to be rater-dependent and subjective. To address these issues, starting from existing cognitive flexibility research protocols, we developed instrumented toys as a new task instrumentation and data collection tool suitable for infant use. A commercially available device comprising a Barometer and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) embedded in a 3D-printed lattice structure was used to detect when and how the infant interacts with the toy. The data collected using the instrumented toys provides a rich dataset describing the sequence of toy interaction and individual toy interaction patterns, from which EF-relevant aspects of infant cognition may be inferred. Such a tool potentially provides an objective, reliable, and scalable method of collecting early developmental data in socially interactive contexts.

Virtual Vistas: Exploring the Evolution of E-Design and Virtual Design for Sustainable Assessment

“…With the integration of computers into several domains of human existence, such as art and design, a multitude of novel opportunities materialised. This section explores the initial experiments conducted in the area of digital design, covering the crucial period from the mid-20th century to the late 1990s [7]. It sheds light on the pioneering works and significant advancements that laid the foundation for the contemporary disciplines of E-Design and Virtual Design.…”