Ithaca College

An interdisciplinary group of faculty and students working on a 3-year research project supported by the National Science Foundation recently met to introduce new personnel and to report current progress and findings.

Non-crawling infants 5-7 months old participate in this research, with half getting experience locomoting using a robotic assisted locomotor device. At 7 months, infants are tested on a number of cognitive tasks using eye-tracking technology. Preliminary results indicate that infants who used the locomotor device excelled at cognitive tasks. This result has important implications for providing early intervention for children with developmental motor impairments. Faculty on this project include Carole Dennis, OT, Helene Larin, PT, Sharon Stansfield, Computer Science and Psychology faculty Nancy Rader, Judith Pena-Shaff, and Laura Muscalu.