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Record W4415871506 · doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2025-106044

Application of artificial intelligence in early childhood development: a scoping review protocol

2025· review· en· W4415871506 on OpenAlexaff
Esther Yu, Samantha Burns, Joel P. Wiebe, Adrianna Schmeichel, Michal Perlman

Bibliographic record

VenueBMJ Open · 2025
Typereview
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicInfant Development and Preterm Care
Canadian institutionsUniversity of GuelphUniversity of Toronto
Fundersnot available
KeywordsProtocol (science)Early childhoodData extractionThematic analysisHealth informaticsApplications of artificial intelligenceMEDLINE

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

INTRODUCTION: Early childhood-specifically, the period from 0 to 6 years of age-is a critical time in children's lives with rapid growth in their cognitive, social and emotional development. This period has also been shown to be the most effective time for early interventions. The use of artificial Intelligence (AI) for supporting early child development is increasing alongside the rapid advancement of technology. AI can be used directly by children (eg, for implementing adaptive technologies), by individuals who interact with children (eg, educators, parents, nurses), and by individuals indirectly supporting early child development (eg, early childhood researchers or policy analysts). This scoping review will provide a roadmap for relevant stakeholders on how AI has been applied within and across different contexts to support infants and young children's development, as well as the most predominant AI technologies used across various contexts. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The current study follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Review The search syntax will be applied in PsycINFO, ERIC, Education Source, CINHAL, MEDLINE, Embase and IEEE Xplore. The purpose of this study is to curate and synthesise academic papers to examine the application of AI for supporting the development of children between birth and age 6 years of age. Studies with children or individuals who work directly or indirectly with children will be included. Part of the abstract and full-text screening will be conducted by two researchers, with discrepancies being resolved by the lead authors. In addition, AI will be used to help with study screening and data extraction once confirmed to be reliable (Cohen's kappa >0.80). Thematic and content analyses will be conducted to identify the types of AI products used and their applications in different contexts, the most predominant AI products used within and across each context, as well as how children's developmental outcomes are impacted by the use of these AI products. Where applicable, visualisations such as tables, graphs and figures will be used to synthesise the data across contexts and AI products used to support early development of young children.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.094
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.088
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Protocol · Consensus signal: Protocol
Teacher disagreement score0.094
Threshold uncertainty score0.497

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0940.088
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0060.007
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0140.012
Bibliometrics0.0180.016
Science and technology studies0.0050.006
Scholarly communication0.0090.011
Open science0.0050.006
Research integrity0.0090.009
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0880.018

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.110
GPT teacher head0.481
Teacher spread0.371 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreProtocol

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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