Attachment Recognition in School Age Children Based on Automatic Analysis of Facial Expressions and Nonverbal Vocal Behaviour

Abstract

Attachment is a psychological construct that accounts for whether children are secure (the parents meet their physical and emotional needs) or insecure (the parents do not meet their physical and emotional needs). Unless identified and supported early enough, insecure children develop higher chances of experiencing issues such as antisocial behaviour or suicidal tendencies. For this reason, this article proposes a multimodal approach for attachment recognition in school age children (5-9 years old). In particular, the approach infers the attachment condition of a child from facial expressions and nonverbal vocal behaviour. The experiments involved 104 children that were recorded while undergoing the Manchester Child Attachment Story Test, an instrument that child psychiatrists use often to identify insecure children. The results show that attachment can be recognized with accuracy up to 71.2% (F1 score 62.4%).