Markant, Julie, Arunachalam, Sudha, Hare, Madeleine, Soderling, Anna, McCormick, Carolyn E B, Tenenbaum, Elena, Shafali Jeste, Sabatos-DeVito, Maura, Erel, Yotam, Libertus, Melissa, Struhl, Melissa Kline, Lew-Williams, Casey, Bermano, Amit H., Stone, Caitlin, Messinger, Daniel, Landa, Rebecca, Durazo-Arvizu, Ramon, Luyster, Rhiannon, Bergelson, Elika, Wagner, Jennifer, Sheinkopf, Stephen J., Hamlin, Kiley, Vu, My H., Gilyard, Kristen, Park, Kayle, and Frank, Michael C.
The Remote Infant Studies of Early Learning (RISE) Battery was designed to assess early cognitive development remotely using tasks that have historically been studied in-lab. The battery consists of tasks that address early development in areas such as attention (social and non-social), memory (faces and non-face objects), representation of quantities (numeracy), pattern recognition (visual prediction and multisensory processing), and language (word recognition). This non-exhaustive list is representative of key developmental milestones that have been successfully tested using preferential looking paradigms. All tasks involve presentation of video stimuli that are appropriate for young children. Video recordings of infants watching the video stimuli and interacting with their caregiver are collected through the LookIt platform using the participant family's webcam. Each task involves presentation of video stimuli on a screen with looking time as the dependent measure. The direct infant assessment battery takes approximately 20 minutes to administer and 40-60 minutes are required for parent-report measures. The RISE Battery Unless otherwise specified, in each task the duration for the window of analysis is the entirety of the trial. Geo-Social Attention Task: Used to assess preference for social stimuli (e.g., Pierce et al., 2011). Two videos are displayed side-by-side. In one, a child is dancing, and in the other, a dynamic geometric figure is shown. Dependent measure is the proportion of looks to the social stimulus relative to social + nonsocial stimuli for the length of stimulus presentation. Visual Paired Comparison (VPC) Task: Used to test memory for faces and non-face complex objects. In this task infants see a familiarization phase where they view the same stimulus on two sides of a screen for 20 seconds and are then shown the same familiar object on one side and a novel object on the other for two 5-second trials (counter-balanced for side of presentation). Dependent measure is the proportion of time spent on the novel face or object at test. Prediction Task: Used to assess pattern recognition (Reuter et al., 2018). This task consists of a central stimulus followed by a visually interesting target animation presented on one side of the screen or the other. Infants see 8 trials where the target appears on the left side followed by 8 trials where the target appears on the right side (counter-balanced for starting side between participants). Dependent measure is proportion of anticipatory eye movements (AEMs) (conservatively defined as 200 ms before center fixation offset until 200 ms after target onset) to the target image in the second block (after the presentation side has switched). Audio-Visual Synchrony Task: Used to assess multimodal processing (Righi et al., 2018). In this task, two videos are shown simultaneously side-by-side, but only one is synchronous with the audio track while the other precedes the audio track by 1000ms. This task includes both social and non-social stimuli. Dependent measure is the proportion of time spent looking at the synchronous video relative to synchronous + asynchronous. Word Recognition Task: Used to assess receptive language skills. This is a Looking-While-Listening task (Fernald et al., 2008) which consists of two picture representations of words familiar to young infants presented side-by-side on the screen while participants are prompted to direct their gaze to one of the images (e.g. “Look at the foot!”). Dependent measure is the proportion of time spent looking at the target object during the window of analysis from 367-4000 ms post-target word onset minus proportion of looks to the target during the same window when it is the distracter (i.e., gaze to the foot when foot is the target minus gaze to the foot when bottle is the target). Numeracy: Used to test representations of approximate quantities. In this task, infants see two simultaneous image streams: one of different images all containing the same number of dots (either 5 or 20) and the other of different images that alternate between the two quantities (i.e., 5 and 20). If infants are able to detect the numerical change, they are expected to look longer at the numerically changing image stream compared to the numerically non-changing image stream. The dependent measure is the proportion of time spent looking at the alternating stream relative to time spent looking at both sides of the screen. Helper/Hinderer Task: Used to assess social evaluation. In this task, infants watch videos of a climber character trying but failing to reach the top of a steep hill (from Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007). On alternating events, a helper character pushes the climber to the top of the hill, facilitating its goal, and a hinderer character pushes the climber to the bottom of the hill, preventing its goal. During a final Preferential Looking test event, infants view the helper and hinderer onscreen and their relative looks to the helper are assessed for 30 seconds. The dependent measure is the proportion of time spent looking at the helper relative to both objects (helper/helper+hinderer). Parent Report Measures: Upon completion of the battery and 6-months following enrollment, parents will complete (1) the CSBS-DP Infant-Toddler Checklist, (2) the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs) (only 12 and 18 months), (3) the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS), (4) the Early Motor Questionnaire (EMQ) , and (5) the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, Revised (M-CHAT-R) (18 months only) for comparison with performance on the RISE Battery. CSBS-DP Infant-Toddler Checklist (Wetherby & Prizant, 2002): the CSBS-DP is a standardized developmental questionnaire designed to assess the social communication, expression of speech and language, and symbolic abilities in children aged 6 months to 2 years. MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI) (Fenson et al., 2007): the MB-CDI is a tool used to evaluate language and communication development in infants and toddlers ranging in age from 8 to 37 months. Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales - Third Edition (VABS-3) (Sparrow et al., 2016): the VABS-3 is a standardized assessment used to measure adaptive behaviors. It has strong reliability and validity and yields an overall composite score as well as domain scores in Communication, Daily Living Skills, Socialization, and Motor Skills. Early Motor Questionnaire (EMQ) (Libertus & Landa, 2013): the EMQ is a parent-report measure that assesses early motor development. The EMQ is organized into three different sections: gross motor, fine motor, and perception-action. Each section outlines everyday situations that children encounter. Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, Revised with Follow-Up (M-CHAT R/F) (Robins et al., 2014): a screening tool that uses parent-report to evaluate risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder. The current project is a pilot study to explore the validity of the RISE battery administered on the LookIt Platform in the home setting with automated video coding completed using iCatcher software in comparison with parent-report of the child’s development.