Abstract
BackgroundEDUCERE (“Ubiquitous Detection Ecosystem to Care and Early Stimulation for Children with Developmental Disorders”) is an ecosystem for ubiquitous detection, care, and early stimulation of children with developmental disorders. The objectives of this Spanish government-funded research and development project are to investigate, develop, and evaluate innovative solutions to detect changes in psychomotor development through the natural interaction of children with toys and everyday objects, and perform stimulation and early attention activities in real environments such as home and school. Thirty multidisciplinary professionals and three nursery schools worked in the EDUCERE project between 2014 and 2017 and they obtained satisfactory results. Related to EDUCERE, we found studies based on providing networks of connected smart objects and the interaction between toys and social networks.ObjectiveThis research includes the design, implementation, and validation of an EDUCERE smart toy aimed to automatically detect delays in psychomotor development. The results from initial tests led to enhancing the effectiveness of the original design and deployment. The smart toy, based on stackable cubes, has a data collector module and a smart system for detection of developmental delays, called the EDUCERE developmental delay screening system (DDSS).MethodsThe pilot study involved 65 toddlers aged between 23 and 37 months (mean=29.02, SD 3.81) who built a tower with five stackable cubes, designed by following the EDUCERE smart toy model. As toddlers made the tower, sensors in the cubes sent data to a collector module through a wireless connection. All trials were video-recorded for further analysis by child development experts. After watching the videos, experts scored the performance of the trials to compare and fine-tune the interpretation of the data automatically gathered by the toy-embedded sensors.ResultsJudges were highly reliable in an interrater agreement analysis (intraclass correlation 0.961, 95% CI 0.937-0.967), suggesting that the process was successful to separate different levels of performance. A factor analysis of collected data showed that three factors, trembling, speed, and accuracy, accounted for 76.79% of the total variance, but only two of them were predictors of performance in a regression analysis: accuracy (P=.001) and speed (P=.002). The other factor, trembling (P=.79), did not have a significant effect on this dependent variable.ConclusionsThe EDUCERE DDSS is ready to use the regression equation obtained for the dependent variable “performance” as an algorithm for the automatic detection of psychomotor developmental delays. The results of the factor analysis are valuable to simplify the design of the smart toy by taking into account only the significant variables in the collector module. The fine-tuning of the toy process module will be carried out by following the specifications resulting from the analysis of the data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the product.
Highlights
In early childhood, children learn by playing in natural settings such as the playground, home, or kindergarten
The EDUCERE developmental delay screening system (DDSS) is ready to use the regression equation obtained for the dependent variable “performance” as an algorithm for the automatic detection of psychomotor developmental delays
We computed a intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) analysis, following the Model ICC (1,k) in SPSS, in which 1 denotes that each participant is assessed by a different set of randomly selected raters, and k is the number of raters for every score
Summary
Children learn by playing in natural settings such as the playground, home, or kindergarten. When a child plays alone, he or she interacts with objects, usually toys, and performs various movements, such as picking or throwing objects, placing them in a row, or stacking them on top of one another Not all these movements are simple; for example, building a tower with stackable cubes can be difficult for children between ages 2 and 3 years, especially if the cubes are small and the tower is high. EDUCERE (“Ubiquitous Detection Ecosystem to Care and Early Stimulation for Children with Developmental Disorders”) is an ecosystem for ubiquitous detection, care, and early stimulation of children with developmental disorders The objectives of this Spanish government-funded research and development project are to investigate, develop, and evaluate innovative solutions to detect changes in psychomotor development through the natural interaction of children with toys and everyday objects, and perform stimulation and early attention activities in real environments such as home and school. Related to EDUCERE, we found studies based on providing networks of connected smart objects and the interaction between toys and social networks
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