Developments in eye-tracking technology now mean that that we can begin to study early responses to social and speech stimuli in community settings. The aim of this study is to assess whether being able to clearly and immediately see where babies look during specific tasks engages parents from different socio-economic backgrounds in East London. We will work in children's centres in Tower Hamlets and Newham, where early language and social difficulties are highly prevalent, and administer a series of ‘candidate’ eye-tracking tasks to see how engaging this technology is for parents and professionals. We will invite a sample of 200 parents and infants to attend a series of 'see what you baby can do’ days. The primary aim will be to evaluate the effectiveness of the process in engaging parents, and the secondary aim will be to determine whether 6-month data can predict individual differences at 24 months.
The project is run by a team from IRCD UEL (Principal Investigator Prof. Derek Moore, Dr Elena Kushnerenko, Dr Przemek Tomalski, Dr Haiko Ballieux and Dr Dee Birtles), in collaboration with Prof. Mark Johnson and Prof. Annette Karmiloff-Smith from CBCD (Birkbeck College).
Our partners include Newtech; Tower Hamlets Children's Services and Acuity Ltd.
Professor Derek Moore along with the IRCD and Birkbeck team have been awarded a generous grant of £166,000 from Nuffield Foundation to conduct the longitudinal study with 200 parents and infants between 2010 and 2013. Children Services in Tower Hamlets and Acuity Ltd. - a Tobii eye-tracker representative have also committed funds to support the project.
This study has already genreated a lot of interest in the media and among practitioners, and has raised awareness of the importance of early intervention. See here for links to examples of impact.
© 2008
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