Plexlines: Tracking Socio-communicative Behaviors Using Timeline Visualizations

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Current clinical data for developmental assessment is often in raw formats.
• Existing methods reduce complex behaviors to single summary metrics.
• There is a need for more nuanced and visual representations of child behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

• To visualize children's coordinated gaze, gesture, and vocalization.
• To develop a tool for identifying developmental delay, especially in Autism Spectrum Disorders.
• To transform raw behavioral data into an understandable graphical narrative.

Main Methods:

• Development of Plexlines, a novel graphical visualization tool.
• Utilizing data from clinical assessment instruments.
• Qualitative assessment of clinician and researcher interaction with visualizations.

Main Results:

• Plexlines transforms raw data into a graphical story of child behavior.
• Clinicians and researchers developed independent exploration strategies for Plexlines.
• Users independently identified children needing further evaluation using the visualizations.

Conclusions:

• Plexlines shows potential for integration into behavioral evaluation processes.
• The tool can aid in detecting developmental delays in young children.
• Plexlines can serve as a visual aid for communicating with parents about child development.