Social signal processing for studying parent-infant interaction.

Marie Avril,Sylvie Viaux,Miri Keren,Catherine Achard,Sylvain Missonnier,David Cohen,Mohamed Chetouani,Chloã« Leclã¨Re,Stã©Phane Michelet

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01437

Marie Avril, Sylvie Viaux + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01437

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Abstract

Studying early interactions is a core issue of infant development and psychopathology. Automatic social signal processing theoretically offers the possibility to extract and analyze communication by taking an integrative perspective, considering the multimodal nature and dynamics of behaviors (including synchrony). This paper proposes an explorative method to acquire and extract relevant social signals from a naturalistic early parent–infant interaction. An experimental setup is proposed based on both clinical and technical requirements. We extracted various cues from body postures and speech productions of partners using the IMI2S (Interaction, Multimodal Integration, and Social Signal) Framework. Preliminary clinical and computational results are reported for two dyads (one pathological in a situation of severe emotional neglect and one normal control) as an illustration of our cross-disciplinary protocol. The results from both clinical and computational analyzes highlight similar differences: the pathological dyad shows dyssynchronic interaction led by the infant whereas the control dyad shows synchronic interaction and a smooth interactive dialog. The results suggest that the current method might be promising for future studies.

Highlights

Parent–child interactions are crucial for learning, later psychological traits, and psychopathology (Cohen, 2012)
We propose the following cross correlation: (i) The “Parental Sensitivity” score of the CIB shows that the parent neglected his child and focused almost entirely on the task in the pathological dyad
These characteristics result in an illustration of synchrony and www.frontiersin.org

Summary

Introduction

Parent–child interactions are crucial for learning, later psychological traits, and psychopathology (Cohen, 2012). In many species, including mammals, parent–child interactions are based on close relationships that are characterized by (i) infant dependency on caregivers and (ii) a specific communication dynamic associated with a caregiver’s adaptation and infant maturation. This type of study is complex, requiring the perception and integration of multimodal social signals. The Syned-Psy project (Synchrony, Early Development and Psychopathology, http://synedpsy.isir.upmc.fr/) aims to improve the synergy among three fields: child psychiatry, developmental psychology and social signal processing. Conceptualized and studied by developmental psychologists, the concept of synchrony is relevant to many different research fields including social signal processing, robotics and machine learning. In the rest of the manuscript, we will follow this definition of synchrony

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