The Effects on Children and Parents of Educating Parents About Ways to Play With Babies

Assessed with the Alberta Infant Motor Scale, an observational measure of motor performance in prone, supine, sitting, and standing positions through a total score and sub-scale scores. Total Score: Minimum: 0; Maximum: 60; Higher score indicating more advanced motor development

Assessed with the Developmental Assessment of Young Children- 2nd Edition, an assessment of motor, cognitive, and language development through subdomain and standard scores, as well as a general developmental index (normative cumulative score). Standard scores range from <70 to >130 with higher scores indicating more advanced development.

A Naturalistic Play Assessment during which we can observe parents' typical daily interaction with infants (i.e., parents are asked to go about their typical activities as if the experimenter were not there) through behavioral coding play sessions lasting 10-20 minutes. We will video code information related to Positioning: Number of Bouts and percent time in prone, reclined, supine, side-lying, seated, standing, and held.

A Naturalistic Play Assessment during which we can observe parents' typical daily interaction with infants (i.e., parents are asked to go about their typical activities as if the experimenter were not there) through behavioral coding play sessions lasting 10-20 minutes. We will video code information related to Handling: Number of bouts and percent time with support by a container or parent at the head, upper trunk, lower trunk in prone, reclined, supine, side-lying, seated, standing, held positions.

A Naturalistic Play Assessment during which we can observe parents' typical daily interaction with infants (i.e., parents are asked to go about their typical activities as if the experimenter were not there) through behavioral coding play sessions lasting 10-20 minutes. We will video code information related to communication: Communication: Number of words (total and number unique), babbling, style (fluctuation in pitch, responsiveness/turn-taking, gestures while communicating, labeling objects).

A Naturalistic Play Assessment during which we can observe parents' typical daily interaction with infants (i.e., parents are asked to go about their typical activities as if the experimenter were not there) through behavioral coding play sessions lasting 10-20 minutes. We will video code information related to toys: Frequency of toy use, number of unique toys, location of toys (Number of bouts and percent time in reach; Number of bouts and Percent time within-grasp).

The usability and feasibility of both interventions (Enriched Education and Typical Education) will be assessed using a Perception Questionnaire with 7-point Likert Scales (1= Completely Disagree; 7 = Completely Agree) including the meaningfulness and ease of use of the activities.

A position tracking garment, the get-around-garment will be worn during awake times for 2 days to determine the time spent in supine, prone, and upright positions.

Assessed with the Object Exploration Assessment, which measures visual-manual interactions when infants are provided with specific objects (7) with varying properties for 30 seconds each to determine exploration time, bouts of exploration, individual behaviors (i.e., mouthing, looking, touching body, bilateral holding) and multimodal behaviors (i.e., looking while acting).

The Preschool Language Scales-5th Edition will be given to assess language development including preverbal, interaction-based language skills in the domains of auditory comprehension, and expressive communication standard scores as well as a total language score.

Parental beliefs will be measured with the Parental Beliefs on Motor Development scaled score and the Parental Knowledge and Beliefs Questionnaire which was developed to measure parent knowledge and beliefs about motor, cognitive and language development using 7-point Likert Scales. Items related to each developmental domain (motor, cognitive, language) will be summed to get a domain score in addition to a total score (sum).

Parental knowledge about language and cognitive development will be measured with the Survey of Parent/Provider Expectations and Knowledge and parent knowledge about motor development will be assessed with the Parental Knowledge and Beliefs Questionnaire using 7-point Likert Scales.Items related to each developmental domain (motor, cognitive, language) will be summed to get a domain score in addition to a total score (sum).

The Parent Play Questionnaire will survey parents' beliefs and knowledge about play with infants.

The Karitane Parenting Confidence Scale will assess parents' confidence in their parenting abilities. Higher scores indicate greater parenting confidence.

The Motor Habits Questionnaire will be used to measure parents' practices regarding motor development.

The Parental Milestone Report will be used to track the timing of the development of key developmental milestones through the onset of independent walking.

The Affordances in the Home Environment for Motor Development-Infant Scale will be used to survey the toys, space, and surfaces available in the home environment. Potential relationships between affordances in the home environment and child developmental outcomes and parental characteristics will be explored.