Quantifying interaction with robotic toys in pre-term and full-term infants
Collin Kather1, Frances S Shofer2, Jeong Inn Park3,1
1Rehabilitation Robotics Lab, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States.
Insights
Pre-term infants show less physical engagement with toys compared to full-term infants. The PANDA Gym offers a novel, accessible method for assessing early infant neurodevelopment and behavior in natural settings.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Pediatrics
- Neuroscience
- Robotics
Background:
- Infants born pre-term face higher risks of developmental, behavioral, and motor delays.
- Early detection and intervention are crucial for improving functional outcomes in at-risk infants.
- Current assessment methods are resource-intensive and may not capture natural infant behavior.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce the Play and Neuro Development Assessment (PANDA) Gym, an affordable, sensor-based system for assessing infant behavior.
- To evaluate the PANDA Gym's ability to differentiate between pre-term and full-term infants' motor and visual engagement with robotic toys.
- To explore novel methods for early detection of neurodevelopmental differences.
Main Methods:
- Development of the PANDA Gym, a mechatronic, sensor-based play environment.
- Analysis of video recordings of 24 pre-term and full-term infants interacting with three distinct robotic toys.
- Manual coding of interaction frequencies and durations (e.g., kicking, grasping, gazing) using established classification codes.
Main Results:
- Pre-term infants exhibited similar visual engagement (gazing) with toys as full-term infants.
- Full-term infants demonstrated significantly higher frequency and duration of physical engagement with the robotic toys compared to pre-term infants.
- The PANDA Gym successfully detected behavioral differences between pre-term and full-term infant groups.
Conclusions:
- The PANDA Gym provides a viable, low-cost tool for assessing infant behavior and neurodevelopment outside clinical settings.
- Observed differences in physical engagement may indicate early neurodevelopmental variations in pre-term infants.
- Further research is needed to ascertain if detected differences are attributable to post-conceptional age or developmental delays.
Abstract:
Infants born pre-term are at an increased risk for developmental, behavioral, and motor delay and subsequent disability. When these problems are detected early, clinical intervention can be effective at improving functional outcomes. Current methods of early clinical assessment are resource intensive, require extensive training, and do not always capture infants' behavior in natural play environments. We developed the Play and Neuro Development Assessment (PANDA) Gym, an affordable, mechatronic, sensor-based play environment that can be used outside clinical settings to capture infant visual and motor behavior. Using a set of classification codes developed from the literature, we analyzed videos from 24 pre-term and full-term infants as they played with each of three robotic toys designed to elicit different types of interactions-a lion, an orangutan, and an elephant. We manually coded for frequency and duration of toy interactions such as kicking, grasping, touching, and gazing. Pre-term infants gazed at the toys with similar frequency as full-term infants, but infants born full-term physically engaged more frequently and for longer durations with the robotic toys than infants born pre-term. While we showed we could detect differences between full-term and pre-term infants, further work is needed to determine whether differences seen were primarily due to age, developmental delays, or a combination.
