Frontiers in Psychology (Dec 2014)

Social signal processing for studying parent-infant interaction

  • Marie eAvril,
  • Chloé eLeclere,
  • Chloé eLeclere,
  • Sylvie eViaux-Savelon,
  • Stéphane eMichelet,
  • Catherine eAchard,
  • Sylvain eMissonnier,
  • Miri eKeren,
  • David eCohen,
  • Mohamed eChetouani

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01437
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5

Abstract

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Studying early interactions is a core issue of infant development and psychopathology. Automatic social signal processing theoretically offers the possibility to extract and analyse communication by taking an integrative perspective, considering the multimodal nature and dynamics of behaviours (including synchrony). This paper proposes an explorative method to acquire and extract relevant social signals from a naturalistic early parent-infant interaction. An experimental setup is proposed based on both clinical and technical requirements. We extracted various cues from body postures and speech productions of partners using the IMI2S (Interaction, Multimodal Integration, and Social Signal) Framework. Preliminary clinical and computational results are reported for two dyads (one pathological in a situation of severe emotional neglect and one normal control) as an illustration of our cross-disciplinary protocol. The results from both clinical and computational analyses highlight similar differences: the pathological dyad shows dyssynchronic interaction led by the infant whereas the control dyad shows synchronic interaction and a smooth interactive dialog. The results suggest that the current method might be promising for future studies.

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