Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Still-Face'

A idade gestacional é uma medida importante, pois quando o bebê nasce antes da 37ª semana há riscos para alterações do desenvolvimento. A relação dos bebês com pais fornece base para o desenvolvimento dos padrões de autorregulação, para o aumento da sensibilidade materna, e para o desenvolvimento do apego. Permeando a hipótese de que, a idade gestacional pode influenciar no desenvolvimento infantil, o objetivo do estudo foi verificar a influência da idade gestacional nas habilidades do desenvolvimento infantil (motora grossa, motora fina-adaptativa, pessoal-social e de linguagem) e a qualidade da interação na díade mãe-bebê, ao longo do primeiro ano de vida (três, nove e 12 meses). Cumpriram-se os princípios éticos. Participaram do estudo 28 díades mãe-bebê, com crianças nascidas entre a 32ª a 40ª semana de gestação, recrutadas ao nascimento. Aos três meses os familiares foram contatados para a primeira avaliação, que constou da aplicação do protocolo de anamnese, aplicação do procedimento Face to Face Still-Face (FFSF) e do Teste de Screnning de Desenvolvimento Denver II (TSDD-II). Aos nove meses repetiu-se a aplicação do FFSF, TSDD-II e foi verificada a qualidade da interação por meio do Child-Adult Relationship Experimental Index (CARE-Index). Aos 12 meses repetiu-se a medida do desenvolvimento TSDD-II e foi aplicada o paradigma laboratorial da Situação Estranha (SE). O tratamento estatístico constou de análise descritiva e aplicação do Teste de Correlação de Spearman, Teste exato de Fischer, Teste de Mann-Whitney e Teste Anova de Medições Repetidas. Os resultados indicaram influência da idade gestacional nas habilidades do desenvolvimento infantil (motora grossa, motora finaadaptativa, pessoal-social e de linguagem), aos três, nove e doze meses, com valor maior nível de significância aos três meses. A qualidade da interação avaliada por meio do CARE-index, indicou predomínio de mães com alto nível de sensibilidade (81,82%). Os padrões de autorregulação avaliados por meio do procedimento FFSF indicaram que 57,14% da casuística apresentaram orientação social não positiva e 42,86% orientação social positiva aos três e aos nove meses 78,57% orientação social não positiva e 21,43% orientação social positiva. O padrão de Apego, avaliado pela SE, verificou apego inseguro para 60,71% e apego seguro em 39,29% da casuística.
Gestational age is an important baseline because when the infant is born before the 37th week there are risks for developmental changes. The relationship between infants and parents provides a basis for the development of self-regulation standards, for the increase of maternal sensitivity, and for the development of attachment. Permeating the hypothesis that gestational age may influence infant development, this study aimed to verify the influence of gestational age on infants developmental skills (gross motor, fine-adaptive motor, personal-social and language), and the quality of gestational age of the mother-infant dyad interaction during the first year of life (three, nine and 12 months). Ethical principles were fulfilled. The study included 28 mother-infant dyads, with children born between the 32nd and 40th weeks of gestation, recruited at birth. At three months old the family members were contacted for the first evaluation, which included the application of the protocol of anamnesis, application of the Face to Face Still-Face (FFSF) procedure and the Denver Development Screening Test II (DDST-II). At nine months the FFSF, DDST-II was repeated and the quality of the interaction was verified through the Child-Adult Relationship Experimental Index (CARE-Index). At 12 months the DDST-II development measurement was repeated and the laboratory paradigm of the Strange Situation (SE) was applied. The statistical treatment consisted of descriptive analysis and application of Spearman\'s Correlation Test, Fischer\'s Exact Test, Mann-Whitney Test and Repeated Measures Anova Tests. The results indicated the influence of gestational age on infant\'s developmental abilities (gross motor, fine-adaptive motor, personal-social and language) at three, nine and twelve months, with a higher level of significance at three months old. The quality of the interaction evaluated through CARE-index, indicated predominance of mothers with a high level of sensitivity (81.82%). Self-regulation standards assessed through the FFSF procedure indicated that 57.14% of the case analysis had non-positive social guidance and 42.86% had positive social guidance at three, and at nine months 78.57% non-positive social guidance and 21.43% positive social orientation. The Attachment pattern, evaluated by the SE, found unsafe attachment to 60.71% and Secure attachment in 39,29% of the cases analysis.

Using a modified still-face procedure the present study explores 3-6-month-old infants' behavioral and physiological responses to mothers' screen distractions during mother-infant interactions. In the modified phone still-face procedure the neutral face of the traditional still face procedure was replaced with mothers' texting on their mobile phones. Infants' cortisol stress responses to mothers' device use were assessed through the collection of 3 infant saliva samples. Infants' behavioral responses including facial expressions, vocalizations, gaze and self-comforting behaviors were also explored. All mother-infant interactions were videoed recorded and coded for analysis. Thirty-four mother-infant dyads participated, average ages for mothers was 29 years and 4.4 months for infants. As predicted, infants demonstrated the changes in affect associated with the still-face effect, with significant differences in positive and negative affect during the play phases and the phone still face phase. As a whole, infants did not respond with increased cortisol responses, however, when individual differences were explored 47% responded with increased stress during mothers' phone distractions. Mother's frequency and attitudes towards device use were also assessed but were unrelated to infant responses. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Abstract Automatic face recognition is a challenging problem which has received much attention during recent years due to its many applications in different fields such as law enforcement, security applications, human-machine interaction etc. Up to date there is no technique that provides a robust solution for all situations and different applications. From still gray images to face sequences (and passing through color images), this thesis provides new algorithms to learn, detect and recognize faces. It also analyzes some emerging directions such as the integration of facial dynamics in the recognition process. To recognize faces, the thesis proposes a new approach based on Local Binary Patterns (LBP) which consists of dividing the facial image into small regions from which LBP features are extracted and concatenated into a single feature histogram efficiently representing the face image. Then, face recognition is performed using a nearest neighbor classifier in the computed feature space with Chi-square as a dissimilarity metric. The extensive experiments clearly show the superiority of the proposed method over the state-of the-art algorithms on FERET tests. To detect faces, another LBP-based representation which is suitable for low-resolution images, is derived. Using the new representation, a second-degree polynomial kernel SVM classifier is trained to detect frontal faces in complex gray scale images. Experimental results using several complex images show that the proposed approach performs favorably compared to the state-of-art methods. Additionally, experiments with detecting and recognizing low-resolution faces are carried out to demonstrate that the same facial representation can be efficiently used for both the detection and recognition of faces in low-resolution images. To detect faces when the color cue is available, the thesis proposes an approach based on a robust model of skin color, called a skin locus, which is used to extract the skin-like regions. After orientation normalization and based on verifying a set of criteria (face symmetry, presence of some facial features, variance of pixel intensities and connected component arrangement), only facial regions are selected. To learn and visualize faces in video sequences, the recently proposed algorithms for unsupervised learning and dimensionality reduction (LLE and ISOMAP), as well as well known ones (PCA, SOM etc.) are considered and investigated. Some extensions are proposed and a new approach for selecting face models from video sequences is developed. The approach is based on representing the face manifold in a low-dimensional space using the Locally Linear Embedding (LLE) algorithm and then performing K-means clustering. To analyze the emerging direction in face recognition which consists of combining facial shape and dynamic personal characteristics for enhancing face recognition performance, the thesis considers two factors (face sequence length and image quality) and studies their effects on the performance of video-based systems which attempt to use a spatio-temporal representation instead of a still image based one. The extensive experimental results show that motion information enhances automatic recognition but not in a systematic way as in the human visual system. Finally, some key findings of the thesis are considered and used for building a system for access control based on detecting and recognizing faces.

Nel presente lavoro di tesi sono riportati i risultati di un innovativo progetto di ricerca longitudinale nell'ambito della psicobiologia. I recenti progressi nel campo dell'epigenetica sono stati applicati allo studio delle conseguenze di esperienze avverse precoci sullo sviluppo socio-emozionale in bambini nati fortemente pretermine. La nascita pretermine costituisce un fattore di rischio per lo sviluppo socio-emozionale, in parte per l'esposizione ad eventi stressanti (es.: dolore neonatale) durante l'ospedalizzazione in terapia intensiva neonatale (TIN). L'epigenetica si riferisce a processi biochimici altamente sensibili alle esperienze ambientali e che alterano la funzione di trascrizione di specifici geni, senza modificare la struttura della sequenza di DNA. Il candidato ha sviluppato un razionale clinicamente rilevante per la ricerca epigenetica comportamentale della prematurità. Inoltre il progetto di ricerca ha dimostrato che il livello di esposizione a procedure dolorose si associa a esiti avversi sul piano temperamentale e della risposta allo stress a tre mesi e che tale associazione è mediata da alterazioni epigenetiche a livello del gene che codifica per il trasportatore della serotonina. Le implicazioni teoriche, cliniche ed etiche di questi risultati sono trattate nella sezione conclusiva. Il progetto di epigenetica comportamentale della prematurità fornisce una nuova prospettiva teorica ed empirica sul tema dell’interazione tra genetica ed ambiente.
In the present work, the candidate reports the results of an innovative longitudinal research project in the field of psychobiology. The recent epigenetic progresses have been applied to the study of the consequences of early adverse event exposures on the socio-emotional development of very preterm infants. Preterm birth is a major concern for socio-emotional development, partly due to the exposure to adverse stressful stimulations (i.e., skin-breaking procedures) during the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) stay. Epigenetics refers to biochemical processes which are sensitive to environmental cues and which alter the transcriptional activity of specific genes without changing the DNA structure. The candidate has developed a clinically relevant rationale for preterm behavioral epigenetics (PBE). The research project has demonstrated that the early exposure to high levels of skin-breaking procedures during NICU stay associate with non-optimal temperamental profile and stress regulation at 3 months of age. This association was mediated by epigenetic modifications (DNA methylation) of the stress-related gene encoding for serotonin transporter. The theoretical, clinical and ethical implications of these findings are discussed further in the final section of the thesis. The PBE project provides a new framework for the issue of the interconnections between nature and nurture.

Nel presente lavoro di tesi sono riportati i risultati di un innovativo progetto di ricerca longitudinale nell'ambito della psicobiologia. I recenti progressi nel campo dell'epigenetica sono stati applicati allo studio delle conseguenze di esperienze avverse precoci sullo sviluppo socio-emozionale in bambini nati fortemente pretermine. La nascita pretermine costituisce un fattore di rischio per lo sviluppo socio-emozionale, in parte per l'esposizione ad eventi stressanti (es.: dolore neonatale) durante l'ospedalizzazione in terapia intensiva neonatale (TIN). L'epigenetica si riferisce a processi biochimici altamente sensibili alle esperienze ambientali e che alterano la funzione di trascrizione di specifici geni, senza modificare la struttura della sequenza di DNA. Il candidato ha sviluppato un razionale clinicamente rilevante per la ricerca epigenetica comportamentale della prematurità. Inoltre il progetto di ricerca ha dimostrato che il livello di esposizione a procedure dolorose si associa a esiti avversi sul piano temperamentale e della risposta allo stress a tre mesi e che tale associazione è mediata da alterazioni epigenetiche a livello del gene che codifica per il trasportatore della serotonina. Le implicazioni teoriche, cliniche ed etiche di questi risultati sono trattate nella sezione conclusiva. Il progetto di epigenetica comportamentale della prematurità fornisce una nuova prospettiva teorica ed empirica sul tema dell’interazione tra genetica ed ambiente.
In the present work, the candidate reports the results of an innovative longitudinal research project in the field of psychobiology. The recent epigenetic progresses have been applied to the study of the consequences of early adverse event exposures on the socio-emotional development of very preterm infants. Preterm birth is a major concern for socio-emotional development, partly due to the exposure to adverse stressful stimulations (i.e., skin-breaking procedures) during the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) stay. Epigenetics refers to biochemical processes which are sensitive to environmental cues and which alter the transcriptional activity of specific genes without changing the DNA structure. The candidate has developed a clinically relevant rationale for preterm behavioral epigenetics (PBE). The research project has demonstrated that the early exposure to high levels of skin-breaking procedures during NICU stay associate with non-optimal temperamental profile and stress regulation at 3 months of age. This association was mediated by epigenetic modifications (DNA methylation) of the stress-related gene encoding for serotonin transporter. The theoretical, clinical and ethical implications of these findings are discussed further in the final section of the thesis. The PBE project provides a new framework for the issue of the interconnections between nature and nurture.

Touch serves as one of the primary means of external emotion regulation for infants. Despite the important role for touch in infants’ emotion regulation, research examining its relationship to infants’ self-regulatory behaviors is scant. Understanding the relationship between internal and external means of regulation, such as touch, is necessary given the pivotal roles caregivers play in infant emotion regulation. The current dissertation assessed how maternal touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors contribute to infants’ emotion regulation in two studies. Study 1a examined maternal touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors in full-term and very-low-birth-weight preterm infant-mother dyads during a Still-Face (SF) procedure. Across periods, the functions of touch used by mothers varied while infants increased their use of self-regulatory behaviors during the SF period. Full-term infants displayed more self-comfort regulatory behaviors following the SF period. Furthermore, functions of maternal touch were associated with infants’ self-regulatory behaviors. Study 1b examined the association between maternal nurturing touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors, and infants’ smiling and distress level. Mothers of full-term infants were found to increase their use of nurturing touch when their infants exhibited distress. Furthermore, maternal touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors were associated with infants’ smiling. Study 2 investigated maternal touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors during a modified Still-Face with Touch (SF+T) procedure consisting of one Normal period followed by three SF+T periods. Maternal touch modulated infants’ responses to the SF and their reliance on their own regulatory behaviors. Although mothers varied the functions of touch they used across the periods, infants used similar amounts of self-regulatory behaviors. Finally, maternal touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors were temporally organized with infants’ affect and attention. Results from these studies highlight the role of maternal touch as a regulatory strategy and mothers’ ability to use only one modality of communication, touch, to regulate their infants’ affect and attention. Results also extend our knowledge of infants’ emotion regulation by documenting the central roles that both mothers and infants play. Finally, results offer insight on the effect of prematurity on infants’ self-regulatory abilities and on the quality of maternal touch.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
醫學工程學研究所
92
Within the automatic human face identification system, a good human face detecting system is needed to serve as a prerequisite, yet within a standstill grey scale image, there is only an intensity variation value on each image element, which lacks information on colored and sequential image, therefore, to be able to accurately circle out the size of the human face within the image and its position only increases its difficulty. Currently majority of the literary review only utilized image’s grey scale value on the mechanical learning or statistic analysis to conduct human face detection, though this method has pretty good detecting ratio, nevertheless, in the area of its classifier design, it can be more complicated. This thesis has proposed a similar template matching method that has produced a feature vector, and then utilized a simpler statistic analysis to conduct sorting on human face and non-human face pattern, the experimental result has a very good detecting ratio; moreover, this feature concept can be applied on detecting other objects or on its identification.

We present a trainable system for detecting frontal and near-frontal views of faces in still gray images using Support Vector Machines (SVMs). We first consider the problem of detecting the whole face pattern by a single SVM classifer. In this context we compare different types of image features, present and evaluate a new method for reducing the number of features and discuss practical issues concerning the parameterization of SVMs and the selection of training data. The second part of the paper describes a component-based method for face detection consisting of a two-level hierarchy of SVM classifers. On the first level, component classifers independently detect components of a face, such as the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. On the second level, a single classifer checks if the geometrical configuration of the detected components in the image matches a geometrical model of a face.

碩士
國立中興大學
電機工程學系
91
Human face detection and recognition is a very popular research subject. Up to the present, it is still a hard problem to detect a human face as an image by machine, if the image contains some faces. In many practical applications (e.g. personal identification using photo-IDs), face images generally contain a simple background. In this thesis, we propose a face detection method based on the information from the edge shapes. High face detection rate can be obtain under the simple color background, posture and countenance. Input image is first enhanced by means of histogram equalization, adding some preprocess to improve the performance for our face detection system, followed by edge detection. The face contour is finally extracted using the edges information. Experimental results are showed to verify the collectness effectiveness of this method.

Contact behaviours such as touch, have been shown to be influential channels of nonverbal communication between mothers and infants. While existing research has examined the communicative roles of maternal or infant touch in isolation, mutual touch, whereby touching behaviours occur simultaneously between mothers and their infants, has yet to be examined. The present study was designed to investigate mutual touch during face-to-face interactions between mothers and their 5 ½ -month-old full-term (n = 40), very low birth weight/preterm (VLBW/preterm; n = 40) infants, and infants at psychosocial risk (n = 41). Objectives were to examine: (1) how the quantitative and qualitative aspects of touch employed by mothers and their infants varied across the normal periods of the still-face (SF) procedure and how these were associated with risk status, and (2) the association between co-touch and the quality of the mother-child relationship. Mutual touch was systematically coded using the Co-Touch Scale (Mantis, Ng, Stack, 2010). Interactions were found to largely consist of mutual contact and mutual touch, highlighting that active co-touching is pervasive during mother-infant interactions. Consistent with the literature, while the SF period did not negatively affect the amount of mutual touch engaged in for mothers and their full-term infants and mothers and their infants at psychosocial risk, it did for mothers and their VLBW/preterm infants. Together, results illuminate how both mothers and infants participate in shaping and co-regulating their interactions through the use of touch and underscore the contribution of examining the impact of birth status on mutual touch.

碩士
輔仁大學
電子工程學系
95
Auto focusing is very important for digital camera system. This paper will propose a face detection method for automatic determination of focusing area, and help taking good portrait photos by the digital camera. The method adopts the Gaussian Mixture Model to train the probability model of skin color, and applies the Expectation Maximization algorithm to estimate parameters of the Gaussian Mixture Model. In order to overcome the influence of illumination change on the face detection, this paper proposes one auto white balance method by learning gray color temperature curve with a statistical method. The method compensates color temperature of the image. A comparative setup of experiments is built to verify the efficiency of the proposed method. Controlled experimental factors include illumination, distance of focus and object distance. MTF values of image quality are used to objectively evaluate the success of auto focusing after face localization. Experimental results show our method has high success rate of face localization, and effectively achieves automatic focusing.

Touch plays an essential role in mother-infant interchange, however investigations have focused primarily on the role of distal modalities of communication, such as affect and gaze. The present study was designed to investigate the functions of maternal touching during a Still-Face procedure between mothers and their fullterm 5歔-month-old infants. The objectives were to (1) document how the overall duration, the types, and the functions of touch employed by mothers varied across both Normal periods, (2) clarify the impact of infants' and mothers' distress on the function and duration of touch provided to infants, (3) investigate the reciprocal relationship between functions of touch and infants' affect, and (4) examine how maternal regulatory behaviours provided in the transition period were predicted by infants' affect, and how they influenced the amount of nurturing touch during the Reunion Normal period. Maternal touch was systematically coded using the Caregiver Infant Touch Scale and the Functions of Touch Scale. Results indicated that mothers adapted the functions of touch they used across period, and according to infants' affect and distress level. Mothers used more nurturing function of touch when their infants were fretting or distressed, whereas they used more playful function of touch in order to get their infants smiling. Moreover, findings revealed that the transition periods played a critical regulatory role and influenced subsequent maternal behaviour. Together, these results highlight mothers' ability to sensitively adjust the function of their touch according to their infants' affect, while at the same time underscoring the importance of touch as a channel of communication.

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Statistics and Information Management, specialization in Information Analysis and Management
This dissertation aims to study the similarities between term and preterm infants in the mother-infant interactions and the infant’s development of the self-regulation. There are three main experiences related to the infant’s self-regulation development and the mother-infant interactions: Still-Face Experiment, Free-Play Situation and the Strange Situation Experiment. The Apgar scores (measure of the general health of the newborn) and the Care-Index scores were found to be significantly different for preterm and term infants. The Apgar scores were also different across the majority of the infant’s weight groups and mother’s age groups. Also, some of the Care-Index maternal scales (maternal sensitivity and passivity) were found to be significantly different for the majority of education levels. The relation between the Still-Face Experiment and the Strange Situation Experiment was already discussed in several studies and is supported by this dissertation: Self-Comfort, Socially Negative and Socially Positive behaviors are related with the Insecure, Resistant and Secure attachments. Both preterm and term infants displayed a Socially Positive behavior and a Secure attachment in the majority of cases. However, tests shown that the results of these experiences could depend on the sample type (preterm or term infants). When analyzed separately, preterm and term infants seem to have similar results in each analysis. However, this was not found to be true: the results for the Still-Face Experiment, Free-Play Situation and the Strange Situation Experiment were significantly different for preterm and term infants.

Tese de mestrado, Psicologia (Secção de Psicologia Clínica e da Saúde, Núcleo de Psicologia Clínica Sistémica), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Psicologia, 2017
No presente estudo, investigámos as diferenças entre bebés de pré-termo e bebés de termo, ambos clinicamente saudáveis, no que diz respeito ao comportamento interativo e à capacidade de lidar com o stress, utilizando a Situação de Still-Face. Quarenta e quatro díades mãe-bebé foram avaliadas aos 3 meses (idade cronológica corrigida no grupo de pré-termo), incluindo 16 bebés de pré-termo e 28 de termo. A autorregulação emocional foi definida como a capacidade que o bebé possui para ajustar o seu comportamento em situações de stress. Os comportamentos de autorregulação foram codificados em três tipos de comportamento infantil durante a Situação de Still-Face: Padrão de Comportamento Socialmente Positivo; Padrão de Comportamento Socialmente Negativo e Padrão de Comportamento Orientado para o Autoconforto. Estes tipos comportamentais infantis foram examinados em termos dos seus preditores, nomeadamente verificando se variavam em função da idade gestacional do bebé, do sexo do bebé e dos recursos maternos (idade, escolaridade e ocupação profissional). Os resultados indicaram diferenças nos comportamentos de autorregulação, embora estas não tenham atingido a significância estatística, devido à pequena dimensão da amostra. Os bebés de pré-termo apresentaram maioritariamente comportamentos de autorregulação socialmente positivos durante a Situação de Still-Face, em comparação com os bebés de termo. Simultaneamente, os bebés do sexo feminino apresentaram mais comportamentos do Padrão de Comportamento Socialmente Positivo, o que sugere uma menor dificuldade na autorregulação das emoções relativamente aos bebés do sexo masculino. Os recursos maternos não estavam relacionados com os comportamentos de autorregulação do bebé. Os nossos resultados sugerem que os bebés de pré-termo apresentam capacidades interativas e regulatórias mais adaptativas de que os bebés de termo.
In the present study, we investigated the differences of interactive behavior and the capacity for coping with stress in clinically healthy pre-term infant compared to full-term, using the Still-Face Situation. Forty-four infant–mother dyads were seen at 3 months (corrected for gestational age in the pre-term group), including 16 pre-term and 28 full-term infants. Emotional self-regulation was defined as the competence of the infant to adjust his behavior in stress situations. Infant self-regulatory behaviors were coded through three types of infant coping behavior during the Still Face Situation: Positive Other-Directed Coping; Negative Other-Directed Coping and Self-Directed Coping. These types of coping styles were investigated to verify if they are predicted by: infants’ gestational age; infants’ gender; and maternal contributions (age, schooling and professional occupation). Results indicated a difference in self-regulatory behavior although these did not reach statistical significance, due to the small sample size. Pre-term infants showed more positive self-regulatory behaviors responses during the Still Face Situation compared to full-term infants. Simultaneously, female infants exhibited mostly behaviors of the Positive Other-Direct coping, what suggest they have less difficulty in self-regulation than male infants. However, maternal contributions didn’t predict infant’s self-regulation. Our findings propose that pre-term infants have more adaptive interactive and regulatory capacities than full-term infants.