Videos, Babies, and Robots..Take 1!

Videos... it's amazing what people find time for... YouTube surfing could be almost as additive as adoption blog surfing..
I need to learn to post videos for, ahem, when "THE TIME" comes. Whenever that may be.
So, for any who may eventually read this blog. Many have asked "what is your PhD about again?" What an excellent test video! :)
Early mobility, such as crawling and walking, is linked with advances in learning, language development, and social/emotional development. As you can imagine, children with cerebral palsy or spina bifida or Down syndrome are at risk for being late crawlers/walkers or never learning to walk/crawl.... Thus, they are at risk for missing key opportunities in infancy that promote learning, etc -- and in turn, may have learning, language, and social-emotional delays.

The purpose of the study? Simply put, we want to know if we can teach babies to drive a little car, and, if so, how young? And, if babies without motor impairments can drive, can babies with different diagnosis learn to drive? The video is of a baby, A., who started at 5 months in the study. The video is 1 month later. yes, 6 months and driving. I told her parents I was in NO WAY responsible for her car insurance, nor her "I want a shiny new porsche" requests when she turns 16.

I will also just add in here -- children living in orphanages generally have delayed mobility -- kids in orphanages are swaddled up tight as infants, don't get picked up too much, let alone moved in a baby bjorn or stroller... They often roll, crawl, and walk at much later ages. As you can imagine this, in conjunction with limited caregiving, no toys in the crib, etc sets up children who are adopted internationally at a high risk for later learning disabilities... we'll be doing all we can in the early months to help our little one catch up in motor skills, paired, of course, with all sorts of fun social and fine motor and learning games... will be too big for the robot, tho :)

Anyway, enjoy the video -- A. was a real "hardship" to work with in my dissertation data collection, as you can see! She was a star on the CNN and Discovery Channel media events!!