We are looking for infants who are 5 month old, weighing less than 30 lbs, have not yet started to crawl on hands and knees and are developing typically. Your child can help us in our work to study the effect of using (or not) a robot to move around and play with toys on cognitive development.
Our long-term goal is to assist infants with disabilities explore their environment in ways that would otherwise be unavailable to them. Your infant will be randomly assigned to either group a) using the robot, or group b) not using the robot; in both groups, infants will play with toys for 12 sessions over no more than 8 weeks. Each play session will be 20-30 minutes long.
All infants will be given a developmental assessment that will be scheduled in separate sessions prior to and after completion of the infant play sessions. Each developmental assessment session will take from 30-45 minutes. Four cognitive assessment tasks will also be administered following completion of the play sessions in one or two sessions (requiring one hour). Assessment sessions and all play sessions will take place in Williams Hall on the Ithaca College campus. You will receive $20.00 incentive for each of the 15 sessions to defray transportation costs and time. The total time commitment for parent interviews and infant training and assessment is anticipated to be approximately 10 hours.
If you are interested in participating in this project (or if you know someone who might be), please contact me:
Hélène Larin, PT, PhD, Associate Professor, Acting Associate Dean for Graduate and Clinical Studies School of Health Sciences and Human Performance
Phone: 607-274-3116 E-mail: hlarin@ithaca.edu
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20141014131556341