RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: The field of dietary assessment has a long history, marked by both controversies and advances. Emerging technologies may be a potential solution to address the limitations of self-report dietary assessment methods. The Monitoring and Modeling Family Eating Dynamics (M2FED) study uses wrist-worn smartwatches to automatically detect real-time eating activity in the field. The ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methodology was also used to confirm whether eating occurred (ie, ground truth) and to measure other contextual information, including positive and negative affect, hunger, satiety, mindful eating, and social context. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to report on participant compliance (feasibility) to the 2 distinct EMA protocols of the M2FED study (hourly time-triggered and eating event-triggered assessments) and on the performance (validity) of the smartwatch algorithm in automatically detecting eating events in a family-based study. METHODS: In all, 20 families (58 participants) participated in the 2-week, observational, M2FED study. All participants wore a smartwatch on their dominant hand and responded to time-triggered and eating event-triggered mobile questionnaires via EMA while at home. Compliance to EMA was calculated overall, for hourly time-triggered mobile questionnaires, and for eating event-triggered mobile questionnaires. The predictors of compliance were determined using a logistic regression model. The number of true and false positive eating events was calculated, as well as the precision of the smartwatch algorithm. The Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, and Spearman rank correlation were used to determine whether there were differences in the detection of eating events by participant age, gender, family role, and height. RESULTS: The overall compliance rate across the 20 deployments was 89.26% (3723/4171) for all EMAs, 89.7% (3328/3710) for time-triggered EMAs, and 85.7% (395/461) for eating event-triggered EMAs. Time of day (afternoon odds ratio [OR] 0.60, 95% CI 0.42-0.85; evening OR 0.53, 95% CI 0.38-0.74) and whether other family members had also answered an EMA (OR 2.07, 95% CI 1.66-2.58) were significant predictors of compliance to time-triggered EMAs. Weekend status (OR 2.40, 95% CI 1.25-4.91) and deployment day (OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.86-0.97) were significant predictors of compliance to eating event-triggered EMAs. Participants confirmed that 76.5% (302/395) of the detected events were true eating events (ie, true positives), and the precision was 0.77. The proportion of correctly detected eating events did not significantly differ by participant age, gender, family role, or height (P>.05). CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that EMA is a feasible tool to collect ground-truth eating activity and thus evaluate the performance of wearable sensors in the field. The combination of a wrist-worn smartwatch to automatically detect eating and a mobile device to capture ground-truth eating activity offers key advantages for the user and makes mobile health technologies more accessible to nonengineering behavioral researchers.
Asunto(s)
Evaluación Ecológica Momentánea , Conducta Alimentaria , Estudios de Factibilidad , Humanos , Autoinforme , Encuestas y CuestionariosRESUMEN
Family relationships influence eating behavior and health outcomes (e.g., obesity). Because eating is often habitual (i.e., automatically driven by external cues), unconscious behavioral mimicry may be a key interpersonal influence mechanism for eating within families. This pilot study extends existing literature on eating mimicry by examining whether multiple family members mimicked each other's bites during natural meals. Thirty-three participants from 10 families were videotaped while eating an unstructured family meal in a kitchen lab setting. Videotapes were coded for participants' bite occurrences and times. We tested whether the likelihood of a participant taking a bite increased when s/he was externally cued by a family eating partner who had recently taken a bite (i.e., bite mimicry). A paired-sample t-test indicated that participants had a significantly faster eating rate within the 5 s following a bite by their eating partner, compared to their bite rate at other times (t = 7.32, p < .0001). Nonparametric permutation testing identified five of 78 dyads in which there was significant evidence of eating mimicry; and 19 of 78 dyads that had p values < .1. This pilot study provides preliminary evidence that suggests eating mimicry may occur among a subset of family members, and that there may be types of family ties more prone to this type of interpersonal influence during meals.
Asunto(s)
Ingestión de Alimentos/psicología , Familia/psicología , Conducta Alimentaria/psicología , Adolescente , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Obesidad , Proyectos PilotoRESUMEN
Nighttime agitation, sleep disturbances, and urinary incontinence (UI) occur frequently in individuals with dementia and can add additional burden to family caregivers, although the co-occurrence of these symptoms is not well understood. The purpose of the current study was to determine the feasibility and acceptability of using passive body sensors in community-dwelling individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) by family caregivers and the correlates among these distressing symptoms. A single-group, descriptive design with convenience sampling of participants with AD and their family caregivers was undertaken to address the study aims. Results showed that using body sensors was feasible and acceptable and that patterns of nocturnal agitation, sleep, and UI could be determined and were correlated in study participants. Using data from body sensors may be useful to develop and implement targeted, individualized interventions to lessen these distressing symptoms and decrease caregiver burden. Further study in this field is warranted. [Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 44(8), 19-26.].