Novel paradigms to measure variability of behavior in early childhood: posture, gaze, and pupil dilation.

Robert Hepach,Amrisha Vaish,Michael Tomasello

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00858

Abstract

A central challenge of investigating the underlying mechanisms of and the individual differences in young children’s behavior is the measurement of the internal physiological mechanism and the involved expressive emotions. Here, we illustrate two paradigms that assess concurrent indicators of both children’s social perception as well as their emotional expression. In one set of studies, children view situations while their eye movements are mapped onto a live scene. In these studies, children’s internal arousal is measured via changes in their pupil dilation by using eye tracking technology. In another set of studies, we measured children’s emotional expression via changes in their upper-body posture by using depth sensor imaging technology. Together, these paradigms can provide new insights into the internal mechanism and outward emotional expression involved in young children’s behavior.

Highlights

Children’s navigation through the social world rests on a set of socio-cognitive abilities that emerge during infancy and enable children to tune in to others’ emotions and mental states (Carpenter et al, 1998; Tomasello et al, 2005; Grossmann and Johnson, 2007)
In the present paper we have provided the example of children’s prosocial behavior
In more recent work we have found that children show greater pupil dilation when viewing an adult struggling with an instrumental task compared to a non-social case that portrays an instrumental problem without a person present (Hepach et al, in review)

Summary

Introduction

Children’s navigation through the social world rests on a set of socio-cognitive abilities that emerge during infancy and enable children to tune in to others’ emotions and mental states (Carpenter et al, 1998; Tomasello et al, 2005; Grossmann and Johnson, 2007). These abilities in turn allow children to later establish and maintain social relationships. Recent advances in eye tracking and depth sensor imaging technology (1) allow us to ‘listen in’ on the internal states underlying behavior, and (2) provide a new lens through which emotional expressions become visible. The technology captures children’s physiology and physiognomy from a distance so as to retain a natural setting in which the targeted behavior occurs

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion