Attentional and perceptual processing of the real-world communication, and learning within rich natural environments.

The goal of this studentship is to understand how children make sense of the natural social visual environment they are growing up in using head-mounted eye tracking to gain first-person perspective on this active visual process. We want to implement statistical methods and analysis UCL, Bloomsbury and East London DTP Co-funded and Collaborative Award Holder Form 2017 Page | 15 techniques capable of handling dense datasets such as linear or logistic regression, auto-regressive path analysis, cluster analysis and regression trees as well as visualization and optimization techniques. These techniques will be critical for understanding the developmental pathways of visual-social function, oculomotor behaviour and attention measures and identifying their relationship to other relevant factors of cognitive and social development (e.g. attachment, social cognition, temperament) and perhaps their eventual predictive value to the emergence of neurodevelopmental disorders with onset early in life, such as autism and ADHD. Overall this study can have a scientific
impact by contributing to the construction of a statistical/computational model which predicts the later behaviour of a child based on early life characteristics such as eye movements behaviours and visual function measures.