Assessing Multiple Object Tracking In Young Children Using A Game

INTRODUCTION

Visual-spatial skills are very important for human as it is needed for our survival skills and it is very complicated and critical skills that we should have. As we know, we attempt to use visual tracking skills to cross a busy road as we should check our left and right if there is a car before we safely cross the road and even follow a ball’s position during a sporting event. All of this event happening in our life is actually fully rely on our brain’s ability to selectively attend and track the position of specific object in a dynamic scene. The aim of this article is to study the complex mental processes underlying object tracking by using a controlled laboratory task called the Multiple Object Tracking (MOT). They transformed the MOT task into a game that suitable for children which is TrackFX, the first game-based MOT task running on touch tablet. This empirical study involved 31 children between the age of 30 and 58 months ( Toddlers 2-4 years old).

CONTENT

Multiple Object Tracking (MOT)Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) was created by (Pylyshyn and Storm, 1988). It is an experimental technique used to study how our visual system tracks multiple moving objects. In the MOT task, the observer is initially introduced to a number of identical discs randomly through display. Half of the discs identified as targets (shown in yellow). Then all discs move randomly for 10 seconds and when they stop moving, the participants are asked to selects the discs he or she believes are the targets. Importantly, the perceptual and cognitive skills implicated in the laboratory Mot task closely mimic skills engaged in real-world everyday tasks including driving, crossing a busy street. Children’s spatial skills and computer gamesMcClurg and Chaille (1987) found that playing select computer games for 5 mins, twice a week for roughly 6 weeks improved 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th graders’ performance on paper and also pencil-rotation task. In fact, the result showed that 5th graders who had received the video game training scored higher that 9th graders who had not played the video game. Other research by Subrahmanyam and Greenfield (1994) and De Lisi and Wolford (2002) found that both girls and boys improved their spatial skills by playing video games.

In addition, Dunbar et al. (2001) found that the attentional skills of children are linked with their behaviour as pedestrians. It showed that children who were better at the game are more able to successfully switch attention visually and were more likely to be careful of traffic when about to cross a road and crossing the road in safely manner. TrackFX design and implementationTrackFX is designed as the first game to transfer the MOT paradigm in which previously was used with adults and children age 5 years and older into a game that the toddlers ( age 5 years old and below) can engage in without an experimental setting. They chose the theme of dancing ladybugs and spiders to attract young children because it is the most familiar animal for children in their society.

They also added some music to go along with the animation therefore the ladybugs look like they are happily dancing. Moreover, they added some sound effects such as cheers to motivate the children to play successfully through the levels. This game include three elements which are: leaves, ladybugs, and spiders. For each round, the children have to track as many ladybugs as possible among a combination of ladybugs and spiders in which the spiders acted as distractors. Initially, identical leaves are introduced and randomly arranged on the screen. The leaves then rotate after revealing whether they are covering a ladybug (target) or a spider (distractor). Then after 4s, the leaves hide the objects and move randomly around the screen before stopping. Once it stopped, the player must correctly choose the target (ladybugs) by selecting leaf (leaves) covering ladybug(s). Each game is divide into a series levels by adding the number of objects (target and distractors). The first three levels were aimed to make sure that the child understood the procedures and purpose of the game.

Study method

There were 31 children (16 female and 15 male) between the age of 30 and 58 months ( 2 to 4 years old), who were enrolled at Harold E. Jones Child Study Centre located at the University of California, Berkeley, participated in the study. All children had obtained their parental permission via a consent form. Besides, 12 adults between the age of 21 and 33 years old were also participated in the study and were primarily students at the University of California, Berkeley. The purpose why the author included a group of adults were because to determine whether their game-based version of MOT reproduced previous object tracking limits established from laboratory-based MOT tasks, thereby to validate their measure.

Procedure

The children were testing at their classroom and maximum of only three children in the classroom at a time. They were given a device to each one of them. The testing was repeated across multiple days spanning 1-5 school days between tests. There were two researchers present at any given time. The researcher introduced the basic rules of the game on the first day before they played it. They have to follow the lady bug (follow with their eyes instead of fingers) and wait until it stops moving. They have to catch the lady bug and not the spider. The children also were given a stylus as an input device to help the children point at the screen instead of using fingers so it is much easier for them to touch the screen using stylus.

Results

All 31 children successfully played TrackFX. They played the game on average of 6 sessions ( range= 1-17 gameplays per child ). The researcher found that there is no significant relationship between number of sessions played and age. They also wanted to confirm whether adult performance matched the expected tracking limit based on previous research reports using the laboratory-based paradigm and they found that the adults’ tracking threshold was at level 7 ( ranging between level 5 and level 9 ).

As stated by the researcher, level 7 translates to being able to track 3 targets and 2 distractors. These results were said to be important by the researcher because they validate that TrackFX is in fact measuring a cognitive ability that is consistent with MOT.

For the 31 children, the average threshold level was at Level 5 ( ranging from level 4 – level 7 ). Level 4 was translated to be able to track 1 among 2 distractors. They also found that there is no significant effect of age on threshold level. The researcher also found that the individual’s ability to track object improved over time with additional play sessions. Therefore, they were able to identify trends of each child’s improvement. There are 31 children played more than one session. There were 37% of the children who had improve their performance by showing perfectly linear improvement over time with repeated gameplay. In fact, there were 17 children showed negative performance slopes because majority of the children played the game for only 2 sessions and there were only 2 children showed no change in performance across sessions.

ISSUES

This research article is focusing on how the children track multiple object at a time. It is also to test the children’s visual spatial skills. Visual spatial skills are important for the children to survive in the real world. They are also be able to apply the skills in everyday life such as crossing the road in a safely manner. It was said that that children who were better at the game are more able to effectively switch attention visually and were more likely to be careful of traffic when about to cross a road and crossing the road in a safely manner ( Dunbar et al. 2001). In children’s world, they often use their visual spatial skills at school, home and on the playground for different types of learning. They may also use their visual spatial skills while playing baseball. The brain ability to track the ball visually coming towards them is a must for them to acquire in visual spatial skills and also their ability to understand the speed and distance of the ball then spatially acknowledge where their body is and decide whether to catch the ball or hit the ball. These skills are needed in real life task and also a lot of regular basis activities such as sports, dance, social encounters and following directions. It is said that visual spatial skills are also important and have a strong connection with motor skills. Spence, I. , and Feng, J. (2010) stated that “Motor behaviour would be impossible without the acquisition, storage, and manipulation of spatial information”. Spence et al. (2010) also stated that spatial abilities are required to represent, organize, understand, and navigate the environment, to address to specific objects, to manipulate objects, and to communicate information about objects and the environment to others, among many other functions and tasks.

CRITICS

To critic the test for the young children, it is not appropriate for the children to be exposed to tablet at a very young age because they will get addicted to it, therefore much screen time for the children is not good for their brain development. It was said that the researcher allowed the children to play games as much as they wanted to, so it is not appropriate for the children to have much screen time. Strong research has been coming in over the last several years, suggesting that looking at screens for hours a day can have some serious health and mental health consequences. In recent studies of Parent, J. , Sanders, W. , and Forehand, R. (2016), the findings indicated that the higher levels of youth screen time were related with some sleep disturbances regardless of the developmental stage of youth. It is said to be linked to higher levels of youth internalizing, externalizing and peer problems. Moreover, the researcher also change and implemented the MOT task into a game called TrackFX in which it is really suitable for the children ages 5 years and below. TrackFX basically is the replicated version of MOT that are designed specially for toddlers without using experimental setting. It is the best approach because experimental setting is not appropriate place to test and observe kids at a very young age because children are more comfortable with their everyday environment therefore the researchers chose the children’s classroom as their setting.

In addition, the way they change the element in the game in which the researchers chose a theme of dancing ladybugs and spiders to attract the children is one of the best approach that they’d done. They know on how to attract the children’s attention in order to get the best result for their research. It is one of the great method to test the children instead of using some lame element that could make the children feel boring. The researchers also added some music into the game therefore the games look interesting for the children to play throughout the levels and the screen displays a “Congratulations!” message if the children are able to pass the level. It is one of the best reinforcement that they used so that the children will get motivated to play each levels successfully. As for their research schedule, I think it is not appropriate to test the children during their lesson time because the researcher did the test repeatedly during 1-5 school days. They need to be more careful in choosing the leisure time instead of the children’s lesson time. Last but not least, I think the approach that they used in this research can be done not only in the U. S but also in Malaysia as technology nowadays have been widely used in education.

OPINIONS

In my opinions, I would like to suggest to the future research studies to include some music of educational-based music such as “alphabet song” or “number song”. Therefore, they can play the game while learning “ABC” and “123”. In fact, they will not only testing their visual-spatial skills but also help the children to learn while playing and enjoying games. In addition, the implementation of the technology in education is one of the best approach that can be done by the researcher for the future studies. This is because times have changed and technologies are constantly evolving and the children are more adaptable to these situations. Maybe they can implement more technologies other than tablet into their research especially in education.

CONCLUSION

Finally, it may be concluded that visual-spatial skills are needed in real life task for the children to track multiple object at a time. It is also to assess the children and help them to improve their visual-spatial skills that are needed in a lot of regular basis activities such as sports, dance and many more. Young children tend to be exposed to the outside world at a very young age when they learn and visual-spatial skills is important and essential for them to master therefore they can apply the skills in real life such as crossing the road and many more. Visual-spatial skills are also associated with cognitive development of young children. When the children are able to track multiple object at a time, automatically it will enhance their cognitive development. Nevertheless, children should be assessed properly especially for young children below the age 5 years old because they need a full guidance from the adults to enhance their learning. They also need a lot of support and motivation at this young age in order for them to explore the outside world.