Multimodal wearable sensor assessment of child biobehavioral responses for early detection of mental health disorders

Can wearable sensors reveal what caregiver reports miss? In a study of 104 children (ages 4–8), we captured biobehavioral signals—heart rate, electrodermal activity, temperature, movement, and speech—across multiple body locations during emotion-eliciting tasks. Machine learning models predicted ADHD, anxiety, and depression with strong discriminative performance (AUCs: .76-.84), identifying up to 3× more clinically diagnosed children than caregiver report alone. Each condition showed distinct physiological response patterns. These findings highlight the potential of multimodal sensing to improve early identification of mental health concerns that often go unrecognized in young children.