Smartphone-based Assessment of Children's Psychophysiology

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Methods, History, Theory

Abstract

Current methodologies for measuring psychophysiological activities require: 1) expensive research or medical devices, 2) attachment of electrodes to specific parts of the body, and 3) expertise of trained professionals for recording and analysis of psychophysiological conditions. These three requirements have made existing methods rather inaccessible, uncomfortable, and inconvenient, particularly for young children. Transdermal Optical Imaging (TOI) is a novel methodology that overcomes these limitations by using a regular camera, including those on smartphones, to record facial videos, which are then analyzed using machine learning algorithms for assessment of psychological (e.g., stress, emotions, lies) and physiological (e.g., heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure) changes. Recently, TOI has been validated against standard methods for assessment of heart rate, stress index, and blood pressure in adults (Liu et al., 2018; Wei et al., 2018; Luo et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2020). Further, the methodology has been implemented into a smartphone application, AnuraTM (Figure 1), to provide health and wellness results within 30 seconds. The current research aimed to determine the validity of AnuraTM results for assessment of young children. Two hundred and sixty-seven children between 2 to 5 years of age (149 males; MAge = 3.98; SDAge = 0.88) participated in the study. Participants were asked to sit facing an iPhone 6s with AnuraTM completing a 30-seconds scan of their facial blood flow while holding an Electrocardiography (ECG) device, PC-80A (Heal Force) in their hands. We found that psychophysiological measures from AnuraTM corresponded strongly with those from the Electrocardiography for young children (e.g., Heart rate: r = 0.94, p < .001; Figure 2). Thus, AnuraTM can serve as an easily accessible, inexpensive, and contactless way to monitor children’s psychological and physiological wellbeing.

Authors

• Si Jia Wu, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Yan Dong, Renmin University of China
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hongfei Wang
  Non-Presenting Author

• Xiaoqi Yu
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lulu Chen, NuraLogix
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kang Lee, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author