Early childhood is a critical time for the development of social skills. However, some children struggle to develop social competence due to a variety of factors. Although supporting social development is an instructional goal for many early childhood educators it can be difficult to measure these skills objectively in order to inform instruction. This manuscript provides results from a two-phase validation of a new, unobtrusive, wearable sensor technology designed to objectively measure social engagement among young children in educational settings. As a first step to validation we focus on the constructs of proximity and frontal orientation, key indicators of early social engagement. We validate these modalities by comparing sensor data to video coded data for social engagement between child-child and teacher-child dyads. Results provide initial evidence that the wearable sensor technology can accurately measure social engagement for children and their teachers in early childhood settings. Limitations as well as future adjustments and validations to the sensor technology are discussed. We also discuss practical applications and future research directions.

中文翻译：

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用于测量幼儿社交参与度的可穿戴传感器的初步验证

幼儿期是社交技能发展的关键时期。然而，由于多种因素，一些孩子很难发展社交能力。尽管支持社会发展是许多幼儿教育工作者的教学目标，但客观地衡量这些技能以便为教学提供信息可能很困难。本手稿提供了一种新型、不引人注目的可穿戴传感器技术的两阶段验证结果，该技术旨在客观地衡量教育环境中幼儿的社交参与度。作为验证的第一步，我们关注邻近性和正面定向的结构，这是早期社会参与的关键指标。我们通过将传感器数据与视频编码数据进行比较来验证这些模式，以了解儿童与教师与儿童之间的社交参与。结果提供了初步证据，表明可穿戴传感器技术可以准确测量幼儿环境中儿童及其老师的社交参与度。讨论了传感器技术的局限性以及未来的调整和验证。我们还讨论了实际应用和未来的研究方向。