Head posture detection for measuring preschoolers concentration
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abstract
Several decades of research clearly demonstrate that high-quality, developmentally appropriate, early childhood programs, produce short and long-term positive effects on children’s cognitive and social development. Research with the Leuven Involvement Scale has shown that the levels of children’s involvement are a predictor of quality of learning.
An involved child gets extremely fascinated and absorbed by the activity he is performing. There are several indicators that can be used to assess children involvement, such as concentration, energy, com- plexity and creativity, facial expression and posture, persistence, precision, reaction time, language and satisfaction.
Some of these indicators require that the teacher pay attention to posture, measure and record the time that the child is facing a specific activity. Head posture usually indicates the focus of attention, since it coincides with the gaze direction, the direction and focus of a person’s eyes. This task is complex and requires several observations, on many children, distributed through the day. Usually, this is performed with a video recorder to help the teacher to evaluate the observation.
The work described in this paper focus on how modern image processing technology can provide a valu- able aid to kindergarten teachers, helping them in the task of registering observations. In this context, head posture is automatically detected and measured, and time is recorded. Although easy for a human to interpret the orientation and movement of the human head, it is a challenge to computers. Of course there is always subjectivity in this kind of observation, but we hope that this tool can contribute to help teachers to make informed and critical judgments about the quality of teaching and learning they offer.
