Principal Investigator Rosalind Picard
Co-investigator Matthew Goodwin
Individuals with autism are known to have difficulties connecting with other people, reciprocating social interactions, and being emotionally regulated by others. Yet, until recently, very little attention has been given to the way people interact together, in a system, rather than by themselves. We propose a new way to collect data on how caregivers and their children, with and without autism, affect and are affected by each other (i.e., how they ‘sync-up’ with one another), both in their behavior as well as in their physiology. We also introduce a customizable digital-physical smart toy platform that will allow us to test hypotheses and collect data about patterns of caregiver-child synchrony in a naturalistic and engaging environment. Together, we hope to forge a new collaboration between smart toy technology and autism research that will help uncover how the social brain develops normally and might be differentiated in autism.