Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Sep 18;20(18):5344.
doi: 10.3390/s20185344.

How Many Days are Necessary to Represent Typical Daily Leg Movement Behavior for Infants at Risk of Developmental Disabilities?

Weiyang Deng  1 , Ryota Nishiyori  2 , Douglas L Vanderbilt  3 , Beth A Smith  2   3
Affiliations

How Many Days are Necessary to Represent Typical Daily Leg Movement Behavior for Infants at Risk of Developmental Disabilities?

Weiyang Deng et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Background: Movement characteristics can differentiate between infants at risk and infants with typical development. However, it is unknown how many days are needed to accurately represent typical daily behavior for infants at risk of developmental disabilities when using wearable sensors. To consider the balance between participant burden and the amount of data collected and optimizing the efficiency of data collection, our study determined (1) how many days were necessary to represent typical movement behavior for infants at risk of developmental disabilities and (2) whether movement behavior was different on weekend days and weekdays.

Methods: We used Opal wearable sensors to collect at least 5 days of 11 infants' leg movement data. The standard (average of 5 days) was compared with four methods (average of the first 1/2/3/4 days) using the Bland-Altman plots and the Spearman correlation coefficient. We also compared the data from the average of 2 weekend days to the average of the first 2 weekdays for 8 infants.

Results: The Spearman correlation coefficient comparing the average of the first 2 days of data and the standards were all above 0.7. The absolute differences between them were all below 10% of the standards. The Bland-Altman plots showed more than 90% of the data points comparing the average of 2 days and the standards fell into the limit of agreement for each variable. The absolute difference between weekend days and weekdays for the leg movement rate, duration, average acceleration, and peak acceleration was 15.2%, 1.7%, 6.8% and 6.3% of the corresponding standard, respectively.

Conclusion: Our results suggest 2 days is the optimal amount of data to represent typical daily leg movement behavior of infants at risk of developmental disabilities while minimizing participant burden. Further, leg movement behavior did not differ distinctly across weekend days and weekdays. These results provide supportive evidence for an efficient amount of data collections when using wearable sensors to evaluate movement behavior in infants at risk of developmental disabilities.

Keywords: at risk; developmental disabilities; infant; minimum wear time; wearable sensor.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(a) Average leg movement rate (average leg movements per hour awake time) from the first day to the fifth day for each infant; Bland–Altman plots comparing (b) the first day, (c) the average of the first 2 days, (d) the average of the first 3 days, (e) the average of the first 4 days, and the average of 5 days for the average leg movement rate.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) Average leg movement duration from the first day to the fifth day for each infant; Bland–Altman plots comparing (b) the first day, (c) the average of the first 2 days, (d) the average of the first 3 days, (e) the average of the first 4 days, and the average of 5 days for the average leg movement duration.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) Average leg movement duration from the first day to the fifth day for each infant; Bland–Altman plots comparing (b) the first day, (c) the average of the first 2 days, (d) the average of the first 3 days, (e) the average of the first 4 days, and the average of 5 days for the average leg movement duration.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) Average acceleration of leg movement from the first day to the fifth day for each infant; Bland–Altman plots comparing (b) the first day, (c) the average of the first 2 days, (d) the average of the first 3 days, (e) the average of the first 4 days, and the average of 5 days for the average acceleration of leg movement.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(a) Peak acceleration of leg movement from the first day to the fifth day for each infant; Bland–Altman plots comparing (b) the first day, (c) the average of the first 2 days, (d) the average of the first 3 days, (e) the average of the first 4 days, and the average of 5 days for the peak acceleration of leg movement.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(a) Peak acceleration of leg movement from the first day to the fifth day for each infant; Bland–Altman plots comparing (b) the first day, (c) the average of the first 2 days, (d) the average of the first 3 days, (e) the average of the first 4 days, and the average of 5 days for the peak acceleration of leg movement.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Bland–Altman plots comparing the average of the weekend days and the weekdays for the (a) average leg movement rate, (b) average leg movement duration, (c) average acceleration of leg movement, and (d) peak acceleration of leg movement.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Bland–Altman plots comparing the average of the weekend days and the weekdays for the (a) average leg movement rate, (b) average leg movement duration, (c) average acceleration of leg movement, and (d) peak acceleration of leg movement.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Zablotsky B., Black L.I., Maenner M.J., Schieve L.A., Danielson M.L., Bitsko R.H., Blumberg S.J., Kogan M.D., Boyle C.A. Prevalence and trends of developmental disabilities among children in the United States: 2009–2017. Pediatrics. 2019;144:e20190811. doi: 10.1542/peds.2019-0811. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bear L.M. Early identification of infants at risk for developmental disabilities. Pediatr. Clin. North Am. 2004;51:685–701. doi: 10.1016/j.pcl.2004.01.015. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ulrich B.D., Ulrich D.A. Spontaneous leg movements of infants with down syndrome and nondisabled infants. Child Dev. 1995;66:1844–1855. doi: 10.2307/1131914. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Jeng S.F., Chen L.C., Yau K.I. Kinematic analysis of kicking movements in preterm infants with very low birth weight and full-term infants. Phys. Ther. 2002;82:148–159. doi: 10.1093/ptj/82.2.148. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bultmann C., Orlikowsky T., Häusler M., Trepels-kottek S., Disselhorst-klug C., Schoberer M. Early human development spontaneous movements in the first four months of life: An accelerometric study in moderate and late preterm infants. Early Hum. Dev. 2019;130:1–9. doi: 10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2019.01.002. - DOI - PubMed