Towards Accurate and Scalable Mental Health Screening Technologies for Young Children

Mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders are highly prevalent in preschool-aged children and can significantly affect their social-emotional development and adaptive functioning. However, identifying signs of problematic behavior at this age is extremely challenging due to several structural and phenomenological barriers. This work leverages mobile and wearable devices to build accurate, usable, and scalable assessment tools that can be deployed in home settings to screen for common disorders in young children. It describes the development of novel screening algorithms that utilize behavioral and neurophysiological signals recorded during brief, naturalistic tasks, and presents stakeholder perspectives toward the usability and clinical utility of such screening tools.