Artificial intelligence detects awareness of functional relation with the environment in 3 month old babies

Massoud Khodadadzadeh, Aliza T. Sloan, Nancy Aaron Jones, Damien Coyle, J. A.Scott Kelso

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A recent experiment probed how purposeful action emerges in early life by manipulating infants’ functional connection to an object in the environment (i.e., tethering an infant’s foot to a colorful mobile). Vicon motion capture data from multiple infant joints were used here to create Histograms of Joint Displacements (HJDs) to generate pose-based descriptors for 3D infant spatial trajectories. Using HJDs as inputs, machine and deep learning systems were tasked with classifying the experimental state from which snippets of movement data were sampled. The architectures tested included k-Nearest Neighbour (kNN), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Fully connected network (FCNet), 1D-Convolutional Neural Network (1D-Conv), 1D-Capsule Network (1D-CapsNet), 2D-Conv and 2D-CapsNet. Sliding window scenarios were used for temporal analysis to search for topological changes in infant movement related to functional context. kNN and LDA achieved higher classification accuracy with single joint features, while deep learning approaches, particularly 2D-CapsNet, achieved higher accuracy on full-body features. For each AI architecture tested, measures of foot activity displayed the most distinct and coherent pattern alterations across different experimental stages (reflected in the highest classification accuracy rate), indicating that interaction with the world impacts the infant behaviour most at the site of organism~world connection.

Original languageEnglish
Article number15580
JournalScientific Reports
Volume14
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Jul 2024

Data Availability Statement

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Funding

We are grateful for access to the Tier 2 High Performance Computing resources provided by the Northern Ireland High-Performance Computing (NI-HPC) facility funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Grant Nos. EP/T022175/ and EP/W03204X/1. DC is grateful for the UKRI Turing AI Fellowship 2021-2025 funded by the EPSRC (grant number EP/V025724/1). M.K. is supported by a Vice Chancellor\u2019s Research Scholarship and EPSRC (grant number EP/V025724/1) and the Institute for Research in Applicable Computing (IRAC) at the University of Bedfordshire. J.A.S.K and A.T.S were supported by The FAU Foundation (Eminent Scholar in Science) and National Institute of Health (MH 08038).

FundersFunder number
University of Bedfordshire
FAU Foundation
NI-HPC
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research CouncilEP/W03204X/1, EP/T022175/
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
UKRI CDT in Accountable, Responsible and Transparent AIEP/V025724/1
National Institutes of HealthMH 08038
National Institutes of Health

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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