Babies have a lot going on, but it can be hard to interpret what they’re trying to tell us. Luckily, researchers are working not only to better understand infant development and communication, but expand the accessibility of participation in infant research so that more families are represented.

Beckman researchers are currently recruiting families for two LittleBeats™ studies. LittleBeats™, a wearable device that collects data from infants as they go through day-to-day activities, was developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a tool to help researchers understand infant development, stress regulation and parent-child relationships.

The first project — the Baby Cues project, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse — aims to study babies’ emotional stress regulation and expand the accessibility of research participation. The team hopes to validate two methods which would facilitate research at home, without the need for laboratory visits: virtual video calls, and machine learning algorithms for processing data from LittleBeats™ recordings. 

The main goal of the second study — the Baby Rhythms project, funded by the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases — is to use the LittleBeats™ devices and machine learning algorithms to automate detection of infant states throughout the day. Newborn infants cycle through six states that correspond to different levels of activity and alertness, including deep sleep, drowsy and active alert states. These states become more organized during the first months of life, and monitoring these states may help with earlier detection and better understanding of developmental delays. 

Bethany Lee, a previous Baby Cues project coordinator and current graduate student at the University of Illinois Chicago; Nancy McElwain, a research professor of human development and family studies; and Corrie Penrod, a previous Baby Cues project coordinator and current graduate student at Michigan State answered questions about these projects, infant research and accessibility.

Generally, what do you enjoy about doing research in this area?

Corrie: I’m really excited about these studies because I have a passion for communication and amplifying the voices of those who may not have the ability to speak fully for themselves. Infants have many ways to communicate but because they can’t speak directly to their caregivers in the ways older children can, it’s important to understand how caregivers read their baby’s signals and know how to support caregivers when infant signals are challenging to interpret. 

Bethany: Working on these projects has had unexpected rewards. Infants and their caregivers are engaging and fun to work with! Infant participants are also very cute, so that’s always a plus. I also get to meet different types of families, and in this type of research where we interact directly with parents through phone calls, emails and visits, we are forming human connections with them. That’s been an unexpected benefit: having the chance to interact with more members of the community and seeing what life is like as a parent in this community. Beyond these immediate rewards, it’s meaningful to be a part of a project that aims to increase representation or accessibility for this kind of research. 

What are some unique challenges of doing research with infants and families?

Nancy: The challenges and opportunities of working with children and parents often vary depending on the child’s developmental stage. Like Corrie and Bethany mentioned, research with infants and their parents has many rewards, but it also requires thinking on your feet and being flexible. Infants’ needs come first and can change quickly, so planned research activities will often need to wait while an infant is fed or even takes a short nap in our laboratory playroom.  But needless to say, it is worth the wait!

Why do many parents get involved with this research?

Nancy: A lot of parents, particularly in a college town like Urbana-Champaign, have a strong interest in the science and want to contribute to it, which has been wonderful. I think another main motivation is the opportunity to learn something about their child’s development through participation.

Corrie: I agree that a lot of parents are interested in being involved in scientific research in general. There was one mom I remember bringing her child in who was like, “oh, baby’s first science experiment!” They were very excited to get their child involved.

Do you ever see interested parents who are hesitant because your research involves young children?

Corrie: I think if we do see a little bit of hesitancy, it is important to us is to be flexible with the moms and let them know that their needs come first. For example, if we’re in the middle of a session and their child needs a break, we accommodate that need.

Bethany: I agree. I would also add that we’re careful to explain the study in an accessible way and give parents time to ask lots of questions during the consent process. We also try to address parents’ concerns about privacy, because we are using LittleBeats™ to captures audio in the home environment, and for some parents this raises questions because the home is a very personal space. We address concerns by letting them know that these audio recordings are processed by machine learning algorithms, and we only listen to a minute here or there to check that the algorithm is working well. 

Nancy: I would also add that research involving infants and young children is always more sensitive because they cannot directly give their consent to participate. So, in addition to being attentive to parents’ concerns and questions, we carefully observe our infant participants during visits. We use something called behavioral dissent, which means that infants can tell us through their behavior and affect (e.g., fussing, turning away) that they don’t want to continue with a research procedure and that they need a break. When that happens, we stop and take a break and consult with caregivers. 

Both of your current studies aim to develop or test methods for conducting research at home, rather than in the lab. Why is it important to make participation in this science more accessible?

Corrie: Accessibility is huge and it’s a domino effect: if the same people are always involved in research, then research findings that get published or presented — and clinical or practical recommendations that may follow from the research — will only represent a certain group of people. That’s why it’s important to make infant research more accessible: to get an accurate depiction of a wide intersection of infants and caregivers. In our research, we aim to get out of the lab and bring research to the real world by doing home recordings and virtual visits with infants and their caregivers.

Bethany: We also recruit both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking participants, so we have all our materials for the studies in both languages. I think that’s really helpful for bringing in a more diverse sample. We also try to remove barriers from participating, especially in the lab visits, by providing families with transportation, parking and/or childcare for older siblings when these things might prevent a family from participating.  And I agree with Corrie — when we’re able to have more inclusive research practices, then of course we’re able to have more inclusive recommendations and even inclusive policy-making, and we’re able to develop the LittleBeats™ device further to be of use to more types of families.

Nancy:  Corrie and Bethany make excellent points. I would add that we conduct both lab and virtual visits so we can test whether our assessments of babies and their caregivers during the virtual video calls are more ecologically valid.  That is when babies and caregivers travel to an unfamiliar, new place like the lab and are surrounded by new (although friendly!) people, these factors may be stressful and change the behavior of infants and caregivers in unanticipated and often unknown ways. By eliminating these factors using more remote methods, such as video calls or wearable devices in the home, our findings may better reflect behaviors that are more typical for infants and their caregivers. 

What would you tell parents who are considering participating in this kind of research?

Nancy: It’s an opportunity to learn about your baby and about the research process, and overall the work that we’re doing is geared toward helping future babies. It likely won’t be for your family’s direct benefit, but we hope that these data and methods can be used not only for research but for early intervention. 

I’m particularly interested in how we might use the tools we’re developing for infant home visiting programs. The demand for such programs, across the country, is much greater than the supply because home visits, as you’d expect, tend to be time and resource intensive. My hope is that we can use these remote methods or wearable devices and algorithms to help supplement and facilitate the important work that home visitors do. 

Editor’s note: This interview was lightly edited for print. 

Learn more about how to participate here: Get Involved – LittleBeats™

Call or email the researchers with questions at (217) 244-2945 or ui-littlebeats@illinois.edu.