Serena could be any young child building a toy house for an imaginary character, if it weren't for the wires and nodules sticking out of her head. Serena is a pioneer in research into the mystery of what makes toddlers tick. She is one of the first children to be studied at the world's first dedicated ToddlerLab, a multimillion-pound effort to get inside the heads of toddlers.
Young children say the most extraordinary things, and they are extraordinary creatures. The change in brain development between two and five years of age is pretty spectacular, according to ProfNatasha Kirkham, a reader in developmental psychology at the Birkbeck Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development.
Babies' brains have been studied by using a technique called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure the flow of blood to different brain regions. Until recently, toddlers needed to be tethered to a machine for these technologies to work, so scientific understanding of them has been limited.
Babies don't move a lot, so that was fine for them. Prof Denis Mareschal said that children want to move around as soon as they get to 18 months and above.
Serena was shown a video showing how to build the house and asked to copy what she had seen. The Guardian
Scientists are able to extend their studies to toddlers because of the development of wireless technologies. It means that we can study the brain activity of young children in the wild, in their natural form, to see what is happening in the brain. It allows us to better understand how they interact with each other socially and how that impacts on their learning.
A group of young children have been followed by researchers at Birkbeck since they were three years old to better understand the development of executive function, a set of mental skills that includes planning, working memory, and flexible thinking.
Serena was handed a pair of pink fingerless gloves, covered in white reflective bobbles, by research lab developer Dr Paola Pinti. The research team will be able to track Serena's hand movements via 18 motion- tracking cameras rigged up around the laboratory ceiling, while she builds a house out of Duplo blocks.
Kirkham says that kids are very physical and that sometimes that can give away their thought processes. If you want a kid to move an item to a certain place, you can see them doing it, but if you catch on to a motion capture system, you can see where they made an error.
The research team can track Serena's hand movements. The Guardian
Pinti put a fNIRS cap on Serena's head and then put a transceiver in her backpack. The information from the sensors will be transmitted to a computer. While you are playing with the Duplo blocks, we need to look at your brain.
Serena is sitting at a table in the lab that looks like a preschool classroom.
She is shown a video in which an adult shows her how to use Duplo blocks to build a house by pressing a button on a box. Serena was told to copy what she had just seen when the video stopped.
Three- and four-year-olds are less able to follow complex instructions than Serena was when she did this task. She builds a house with a garden filled with flowers.
Understanding how brain processes develop isn't just a cerebral exercise, it's also a skill that children with neurological disorders may have trouble with.
Toddlerhood is when children begin to discover social interactions, gradually progressing from playing alongside one another to sharing and collaborating during play. A better understanding of the subtle ways in which children with different brain structures differ during the early years could help identify potential problems earlier.
A home lab is similar to a front room, and a nap lab is where researchers can study children's sleep. The ToddlerLab has a virtual environment called the Cave, which can be used without a bulky virtual reality headset.
Serena inside the Cave is a virtual reality environment that tests children's brains. The Guardian
If you want to understand natural behaviours, you have to be in a 3D world, but we can't build environments like a beach, a forest, or a zoo in a laboratory. Understanding how children interact with an animal, versus a person, could provide new insights into conditions such as autism, where some individuals seem to find it easier to connect with animals compared with their peers. Virtual environments can help researchers understand when and how young children begin to distinguish between real and imaginary objects.
Serena is the first child to use the system. She is given a pair of large plastic glasses to wear. She can see in 3D and have her eye movements tracked to see what she is interested in. Serena thinks she looks like a DJ.
A playground scene is being projected on to the walls and floor of the room where she is being led into. A small elephant is standing on the grass. Serena is taught how to blow up the balloons by waving her arms and holding a white ball. Serena says she likes coming to play the different games. I wonder what she would like to do when she is older. She wants to be an ocean scientist.
