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 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 approximately 1 hour. Four cognitive assessment tasks will also be administered following completion of the play sessions in two additional sessions of approximately 30 minutes each (requiring one hour in total). All evaluation, play, and cognitive assessment sessions will take place in Williams Hall on the Ithaca College campus.
All sessions will be completed within 8 weeks. You will receive $20.00 incentive for each of the 16 sessions that you attend to defray transportation costs and time. The total time commitment for parent interviews and infant training and assessment is anticipated to be approximately 8 hours.
If you are interested in participating in this project (or if you know someone who might be), please contact:
Hélène Larin, PT, PhD
Phone: 607-274-3116
Email: hlarin@ithaca.edu
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20141023152945810