Department of Development and Socialization Psychology, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy.
Mamiù, Association for Baby-Swimming Activities, 35010 Padua, Italy.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jul 28;19(15):9262. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159262.
According to the concept of “embodied cognition”, motor development should not be considered distant from cognitive and language processes. Motor development is essential in the first 1000 days of life, as the child explores and learns new information from the environment. Among motor activities, baby swimming allows infants to make movements that they are not able to perform on solid ground. Since movements become slower in water, the sensory perception of these movements is amplified. However, the relationship between early swimming experience and motor development has not yet been investigated. Therefore, we carried out a pilot study with the aim of exploring this relationship for the first time. To that end, 32 infants aged from 6 to 10 months were recruited. The Peabody Developmental Motor Scale-2 was used to assess motor abilities in healthy children who regularly carried out aquatic courses compared to children who never attended swimming practice. Independent-sample t-tests showed significant differences in favor of the group that performed infant swimming activities on measures of reflexes (t = −2.2, p < 0.05), grasping (t = −3.8, p < 0.001), fine-motor quotient (t = −3.4, p < 0.01) and total-motor quotient (t = −2.4, p < 0.05). Overall, in line with the embodied cognition perspective, these preliminary results are encouraging and allow us to investigate how motor development influences later language development.
根据“具身认知”的概念，运动发展不应被视为远离认知和语言过程。儿童在生命的头 1000 天中，通过探索和从环境中学习新信息，运动发展至关重要。在运动活动中，婴儿游泳可以让婴儿做出他们在陆地上无法完成的动作。由于在水中运动速度变慢，这些动作的感觉知觉会被放大。然而，早期游泳经验与运动发展之间的关系尚未得到研究。因此，我们进行了一项初步研究，旨在首次探索这种关系。为此，我们招募了 32 名年龄在 6 至 10 个月之间的婴儿。我们使用 Peabody 发育运动量表-2 来评估经常参加水上课程的健康儿童与从未参加过游泳练习的儿童的运动能力。独立样本 t 检验显示，在反射（t = -2.2，p < 0.05）、抓握（t = -3.8，p < 0.001）、精细运动商数（t = -3.4，p < 0.01）和总运动商数（t = -2.4，p < 0.05）方面，游泳组的儿童表现出显著的差异。总的来说，这些初步结果与具身认知的观点一致，令人鼓舞，并使我们能够研究运动发展如何影响后期的语言发展。
