Poster #73 - The physics of social interaction in preschool classrooms

• In Event: Poster Session 12

Abstract

Dynamic systems concepts are prevalent in developmental psychology but there have been few formal applications of theory of dynamics to children’s behavior in naturalistic contexts (see O. Ossmy et al. 2020). We seek to rectify this situation using precise measurement of children’s behavior combined with an explicit model of phase-transition. Specifically, we investigate social interaction among children from continuous measurements of their location and orientation in preschool inclusion classrooms with an accuracy of ~13cm using a commercial system based on ultra-wideband radio frequency identification (UWB-RFID). Theory suggests that free-moving individuals and social groups may behave gas-like or liquid-like, each representing different types of social interactions [T. Yoon, et al. 2018]. To investigate social interactions in the classroom, we measure the local density distribution and propose a dynamical simulation model that integrates the both spatial and angular orientations of children.
Using UWB-RFID technology, locations and orientations of each child in two preschool classrooms (D1, D2) were traced at 2~4 Hz during the academic year 2018-2019 where the two classrooms had 10 and 17 children and 2 and 3 teachers respectively. A total of 12 three-hour observations in class D1 and 13 observations of class D2 were recorded.
Vests with RFID tags over children’s hips were specially designed to be worn by them during their regular classroom activities. Receivers in the corners of each classroom received signals at 2~4 Hz allowing continuous measurement of children’s spatial locations and orientation (see Figure 1). Unifying the spatial location information from tags on the left and right side of each vest, orientation information of each child was also extracted.
Figure 1 suggests that the participants are not uniformly located in the whole classroom space, implying that they may form small social groups. The emergence of such groups are consistent over different observations with individuals joining and leaving the groups. It appears that the density of children varies both by physical location and perhaps over time. Figure 2 plots the observed density distribution in two classrooms.
In the vapor-liquid phase transition, the particle density is not homogeneously distributed in space and corresponds to a typical bi-peaked local density distribution [T. Yoon, et al. 2018]. The distribution p(rho) measures the spatial variation of the local number-density of particles [J.P. Hansen et al. 1998] with low- and high-density peaks representing vapor and liquid phases, respectively. We measure p(rho) in classroom D1, D2 in Figure 2 (a-b). We find that p(rho) agree excellently with a bi-gamma distribution, with a vapor density peak around rho_v=0.2~0.4, and a liquid density peak around rho_l=1.05~1.20. This result suggests a vapor-liquid coexistence phase in both D1 and D2. Finally, we propose a dynamic physics model for numerical simulation that can reproduce the system and illustrate coexistence of two types of social interactions (see Figure. 2c). The results suggest that formal dynamic-systems understanding of children’s social behavior in naturalistic settings have the potential to shed light on group interaction.

Authors

• Yi Zhang, University of Miami

• Debasish Sarker, University of Miami

• Samantha Mitsven, University of Miami

• Daniel Messinger, University of Miami
  Presenting Author

• Lynn K Perry, University of Miami

• Chaoming Song, University of Miami