This study will test the validity and feasibility of an smartwatch-based system to detect eating and drinking events in both laboratory and free-living conditions.
Parents or caregivers (18-70 years) who have children aged 8-12 years
Child is willing and able to wear smartwatch during school hours (have not restrictions in the school setting)
Any condition or circumstance that could impede study completion
Child does not follow a regular eating pattern
Child eats less than 1 meal and 1 snack in a day
Child is restricted or allergic to the study foods
A sample of 35 dyads (35 parents and their 8-12 years old children) will be recruited from the Baton Rouge, LA area.
Cohort
Cross-sectional
Smartwatch and EMA-based eating behavior tracking
Other interventionParticipants (child-parent dyads) will wear a smartwatch on their dominant hand during a laboratory session and for three days in free-living conditions. In the lab, dyads will perform eating-related activities (e.g., eating with utensils, eating with hands, drinking) and non-eating activities (e.g., walking, writing, brushing teeth) while being video recorded for ground truth validation. Parents will receive a 20-minute training on using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) prompts to record meal and snack times and will respond to EMA reminders during the free-living period. Adherence will be monitored through smartwatch wear time and EMA response rates.
Accuracy and Performance of Smartwatch-based Eating Detection System in Controlled Conditions
Accuracy and performance of smartwatch-based system for detecting eating and drinking events compared to video-coded ground truth during a controlled laboratory conditions. Metrics include: Precision (proportion of correctly detected eating events among all detected events), Recall/Sensitivity (proportion of actual eating events detected), Specificity (proportion of non-eating events correctly identified as non-eating) F1-score (harmonic mean of precision and recall), Overall accuracy (proportion of correct classification).
Adherence to Smartwatch Protocol
Proportion of families meeting adherence criteria, defined as both parent and child wearing the smartwatch during eating on at least 2 of 3 days and the parent responding to ≥75% of EMA prompts related to smartwatch charging and app functionality.
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