Borioni Federica, Biino Valentina, Tinagli Valeria, Pesce Caterina
Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, 56862University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy.
Department of Neuroscience, Biomedicine and Movement Science, 197867University of Verona, Verona, Italy.
Percept Mot Skills. 2022 Aug;129(4):977-1000. doi: 10.1177/00315125221090203. Epub 2022 Apr 26.
Contact with water, even from birth, may be an important experience for child development. In this work, we aimed to investigate if baby swimming might influence infant development in motor and cognitive domains. We assigned infants to either a 10-week baby swimming intervention ( = 12; age = 13 months () = 7) or a control group ( = 15; age = 22 months () 6). We assessed motor development with the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales (2nd edition, PDMS-2) and cognitive development with core tests of executive functions: delayed response for working memory, object retrieval for inhibition, and A-not-B for response shifting. Non-parametric analyses revealed that infants in the baby-swimming group improved in gross, fine, and total motor skills, and showed marginally better inhibition speed and shifting accuracy, with associated gains of shifting accuracy and fine and total motor skills. Even with in this small-sized convenience sample, this pilot study revealed promising benefits from baby swimming on motor development that warrant further study. This preliminary work paves the way for replication and illustrates what effect sizes may be expected in sufficiently powered well-designed follow-up research targeted to aid the joint development of motor and cognitive skills as early as infancy.
即使从出生起就接触水，这对儿童发育而言可能也是一项重要经历。在本研究中，我们旨在探究婴儿游泳是否会影响婴儿在运动和认知领域的发育。我们将婴儿分为两组，一组接受为期10周的婴儿游泳干预（n = 12；平均年龄 = 13个月，标准差 = 7），另一组为对照组（n = 15；平均年龄 = 22个月，标准差 = 6）。我们使用皮博迪发育运动量表（第2版，PDMS - 2）评估运动发育情况，并通过执行功能的核心测试评估认知发育：工作记忆的延迟反应、抑制的物体检索以及反应转换的A非B任务。非参数分析显示，婴儿游泳组的婴儿在粗大运动、精细运动和总体运动技能方面均有改善，并且在抑制速度和转换准确性方面表现略好，同时在转换准确性以及精细运动和总体运动技能方面也有相应提高。即便在这个小样本的便利抽样研究中，这项初步研究也揭示了婴儿游泳对运动发育具有潜在益处，值得进一步研究。这项前期工作为后续重复研究奠定了基础，并说明了在针对促进婴儿期运动和认知技能联合发育而设计的、样本量充足且设计良好的后续研究中可能预期的效应大小。
