Romana Burgess

A computational approach to understanding interactions between parents and infants

Supervisors:

Professor Ian Nabney, Department of Computer Science
Dr Rebecca Pearson, Bristol Medical School (honorary)

Email: az19326@bristol.ac.uk

Project Summary:

My PhD aims to improve understanding of parent-infant interactions. Data used in the project comes from two birth cohort studies: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), and Grown in Wales (GiW). I am undertaking an extensive analysis of videos of parent-infant interactions, often captured using wearable headcams. These interactions have been manually ‘coded’ to identify the fine-grained behaviours expressed by the parents and infants. Early work investigated behavioural sequences and co-occurrences, before I started an exploration into the value of "thin slice sampling" in parent-infant research. The aim of this was to understand the extent to which short segments of behaviours are representative of behaviours over longer segments, and how this varies by type of behaviour (e.g. facial expression, touch).

In the long-term, I hope to use machine learning classification techniques on these data to identify parents with mental health problems. By improving understanding of how parents and infants interact, this will provide novel insight into how parents with mental health conditions communicate with their infants, including the expression of potentially problematic behaviours. It is hoped that findings from this research will be used to inform interventions to improve mental health outcomes for both parent and infant.

General Profile:

Before joining the Digital Health and Care CDT, I studied for an Integrated Masters in Mathematics at the University of Exeter, with modules in data science and biological systems modelling. I wanted to move towards a more health-focused postgraduate study, and applied to the CDT in the hopes that it could facilitate a link between my background and my aspirations.

Publications:

Costantini, I., Cordero, M. A., Campbell, A., Burgess, R., Glen, K., Moraitopoulou, G., Paul, E., Bornstein, M. H., Culpin, I., & Pearson, R. M. (2021, July 13). Mental Health Intergenerational Transmission (MHINT) Process Manual. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/s6n4h