A recent project by King’s College London, in collaboration with Manchester Met, uses head cams and face decoding technology. This aims to make teenagers’ facial expressions easier to understand, uncover hidden feelings, and gain insights into relationships. The European Research Council (ERC) funded the whole project. 110 families participated in the research including youths of age 14-16 and their parents and they were observed during everyday interactions.
The focus was on how well computers and AI could capture authentic human emotions, especially of teenagers. The technology proved how potential it is to identify emotions such as happiness and worry and, even if they are masked. For example, the algorithms can measure if someone is 20% worried or 5% happy. Also it can identify if teenagers are masking their true feelings.
From the findings it can be said that this approach could effectively increase communication and understanding between teens and their parents. The technology will serve as a valuable tool in the field of therapy to detect mental health issues effortlessly. As it includes recording the real interactions during relaxing activities like card games, it will be able to assess authentic emotional expressions and may show us a new way to encourage positive family dynamics.
In the project AI software was used to quantify and decode emotional nuances to predict human judgment and provide detailed insights into one’s mixed up emotional states. In modern life mental health problems are increasing rapidly with high stress, lack of communication and making the family bond lighter. Maintaining a good relationship with family has become really tough. Family therapy became famous in all these years.
This technology can help in family therapy sessions,to improve parent-teen relationships and to control the rising mental health concerns among adolescents. lecturer in mental health nursing at King’s College London, Dr. Tom Jewell said “One of the most exciting things about this project is the potential to use headcam footage in family therapy sessions. For example, families could be asked to film themselves doing a task, either at home or in the session.The therapist could then review the task with the family, picking out positive moments in the interaction.”
