NCT00268931

Development Training in Babies Born Preterm

Enhanced Developmental Training Experiences in Babies Born Preterm

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 32 (actual)
• Sponsor: Christiana Care Health Services · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 6 Weeks – 11 Weeks
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The specific purpose of this study is to determine the effect of movement training on the onset of motor skills in babies born prematurely. We hypothesize that infants who participate in movement training will show advances in motor skills, visual attention, and toy-oriented behavior.

Detailed description

The long term goal of this research program is to develop detailed intervention options for physical therapy treatment of very young preterm infants at risk for disability. The ability of infants to start reaching marks the beginning of an infants' ability to independently explore objects, and impacts development across multiple domains, including cognitive, language, and social. The aim of this study is to determine if bi-daily movement training will advance the reaching abilities of infants born preterm as compared to non-movement trained controls. Movement Training Group: Parents/Caregivers will be instructed to improve their infants' awareness and ability to reach for toys with their arms and legs by performing two sets of 10 minutes of daily exercises with them. The first 10 minutes will focus on improving awareness of their arms and toys (such as bells on their wrists). The second 10 minutes of activity that focuses on introducing infants to a task-space they rarely experience at this age, the task-space required for midline reaching (such as moving the infant's arm to a midline toy). An experimenter will visit each family in their homes every other week (the week that is not a testing week) to assure correctness of training, encourage full participation and answer any questions. Social Training Group: To control for increased social interaction that accompanies the enhanced training, parents of infants in this group will serve as a control group. Parent/Caregivers will be asked to perform 2x a day of 10 minutes face-to-face social interaction with their infants. Parents and infants will receive a 10 minute audio tape of popular kids' songs. They will be instructed to place infants supine or in a bouncy seat and interact with the infant visually and verbally during this time period along with the music. After the study is completed, each group will be offered the training booklet that the opposite group received.

Conditions

• Premature Birth

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Movement Training	This group of infants underwent specific movement training activities two times per day with their parents.
BEHAVIORAL	Social Training	This group underwent special social interactions with their parents two times each day.

Timeline

• Start date: 2004-08-01
• Primary completion: 2008-04-01
• Completion: 2008-04-01
• First posted: 2005-12-23
• Last updated: 2013-04-16

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States