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RESEARCH

METHODS

At ISEY, we have pioneered the development of new methods to track what children experience, and how they respond to these experiences, in real time.

We use these methods in research, and consultancy and evaluation for industry, charity and educational organisations.

Close-up of a baby with a data collection device attached to their head.

Wearables

We have developed miniature wearable sensors, worn by the children and household members, that include cameras and microphones, heart rate sensor, position and movement sensors.

Read more about the hardware we use to make our recordings here.

Wearable sensors for child monitoring

Naturalistic brain recordings

We use brain recordings during naturalistic, free-flowing parent-child interactions that are as close to real-world experiences as we can make them. To record brain activity we use EEG, which records electrical activity levels at the surface of the brain, and fNIRS, which measures oxygen consumption in the outer layers of the brain.

Research setup with an adult and infant wearing EEG caps, using motion capture technology for facial expression analysis.

Machine learning and AI.

Microphones and child-worn cameras capture low-level sound and light fluctuations; from these, machine learning and AI tools can automatically convert this into something meaningful - such as where the child is, what they are looking at, and so on. Read more about the machine learning and AI analyses tools that we use here.

Diagram illustrating auditory scene and sound event detection processes. Left side shows people with umbrellas on a street, indicating rain. Bottom left shows icons for people talking, car engine running, and raining. Right side details technical processes like feature extraction, speech activity detection, speaker change detection, speech turn representation, clustering, with corresponding graphs and clusters.

Tracking what children experience and how they respond in real time.

Using child-worn cameras, microphones, movement sensors and physiological sensors we can also track how children are being influenced by, and responding to, individual features in their environment, in real time. You can read more about our work tracking children’s real-world behaviours here.

Child tracking through wearable head cameras

Learn more about our…

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