title: Contributions of head-mounted cameras to studying the visual environments of infants and young children.
abstract: Head-mounted video cameras (with and without an eye camera to track gaze direction) are being increasingly used to study infants' and young children's visual environments and provide new and often unexpected insights about the visual world from a child's point of view. The challenge in using head cameras is principally conceptual and concerns the match between what these cameras measure and the research question. Head cameras record the scene in front of faces and thus answer questions about those head-centered scenes. In this "tools of the trade" article, we consider the unique contributions provided by head-centered video, the limitations and open questions that remain for head-camera methods, and the practical issues of placing head-cameras on infants and analyzing the generated video.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington IN 47405.
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington IN 47405.
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204.
authors.forename: Hanako
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yoshida
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington IN 47405.
authors.forename: Caitlin M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Fausey