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 and will take place in Williams Hall on the Ithaca College campus.
All infants will also be given developmental assessments (1 hour each) and four cognitive assessment tasks (30 minutes each). 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 us!
Carole Dennis, ScD, OT/L, Professor Hélène Larin, PT, PhD
Occupational Therapy Department Acting Associate Dean for Graduate Studies
Phone (607) 274-1057 Phone: 607-274-3116
email: cdennis@ithaca.edu email: hlarin@ithaca.edu
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20150213123209914