Mouthing Behavior Durations and Frequencies for Children 6 Months to 6 Years

Foluke Adelabu's dataset quantifies indoor mouthing contacts for children aged 6 months to 6 years. It includes data from 99 children videotaped for 3–4 hours during natural indoor play across three U.S. regions. The data, last updated in May 2026, provides age-specific frequency and duration metrics for exposure modeling.

Use Cases

• Modeling children's exposure to indoor dust contaminants based on age-stratified mouthing duration data.
• Analyzing the decline of pacifier use with age based on the reported complete discontinuation by age 3–<6 years.
• Comparing mouthing contact durations across different household surfaces like 'other food', 'pacifiers', 'food containers', and 'hands'.
• Validating exposure factors for risk assessment models using the provided frequency (contacts/h) and duration (minutes/h) metrics.

Strengths

• Data from 99 children provides a sample for analysis.
• Methodology used 360-degree cameras to reduce observer interference during 3–4 hour recording sessions.
• Results include specific median duration figures, such as 18.67 min/h for children 6–<12 months declining to 5.02 min/h for children 3–<6 years.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Geographic coverage is limited to three U.S. regions (Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina).

Provenance

Source

Foluke Adelabu via figshare.

Collection Method

Advanced videotaping and video translation using 360-degree cameras and Virtual Timing Device (VTD) to generate Micro-Level Activity Time Series (MLATS).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-12 05:27:01; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Three U.S. regions: Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina.