Young children's friendships fuel essential developmental outcomes (e.g., social-emotional competence) and are thought to provide even greater benefits to children with or at-risk for disabilities. Teacher and parent report and sociometric measures are commonly used to measure friendships, and ecobehavioral assessment has been used to capture its features on a momentary basis. In this proof-of-concept study, we use Ubisense, the Language ENvironmental Analysis (LENA) recorder, and advanced speech processing algorithms to capture features of friendship – child-peer speech and proximity within activity areas. We collected 12,332 1-second speech and location data points. Our preliminary results indicate the focal child at-risk for a disability and each playmate spent time vocalizing near one another across 4 activity areas. Additionally, compared to the Blocks activity area, the children had significantly lower odds of talking while in proximity during Manipulatives and Science. This suggests that the activity areas children occupy may affect their engagement with peers and, in turn, the friendships they development. The proposed approach is a groundbreaking advance to understanding and supporting children's friendships.

幼儿的友谊促进了基本的发展成果（例如，社交情感能力），并且被认为可以为有残疾或有残疾风险的儿童提供更大的好处。教师和家长的报告和社会测量指标通常用于衡量友谊，而生态行为评估已被用于在瞬间捕捉其特征。在这项概念验证研究中，我们使用 Ubisense、语言环境分析 (LENA) 记录器和高级语音处理算法来捕捉友谊的特征——儿童同伴的语音和活动区域内的接近度. 我们收集了 12,332 个 1 秒语音和位置数据点。我们的初步结果表明，焦点儿童有残疾风险，每个玩伴都花时间在 4 个活动区域中彼此靠近发声。此外，与 Blocks 活动区相比，孩子们在 Manipulative 和 Science 期间近距离交谈的几率明显较低。这表明儿童占据的活动区域可能会影响他们与同龄人的互动，进而影响他们发展的友谊。提议的方法是理解和支持儿童友谊的突破性进展。