Kelsey Bushnell just turned a year old. Like most babies, she’s very interested in grabbing new things and putting them in her mouth. On the day I visited her home, she was particularly fascinated with my microphone cord.
I move it away—out of sight, out of mind. But she leans over, lands on her left arm and reaches across her body with her right arm to grab the cord.
This is something most babies can do around ten months, but for Kelsey it’s a new skill. She’s still learning to sit on her own and is about six months behind in certain motor skills due to hypotonia, or low muscle tone.
“It’s really hard for her, especially to sit and reach to that side,” said Regina Harbourne, director of the Infant Development Lab at Duquesne University. “But she remembered it was there, so that’s one thing, that’s good object permanence…and then she figured out how to get there.”
Play is integral to how babies grow and learn, so if they are delayed in the ability to sit or reach, other areas can be impacted. Because everything is so entwined, Harbourne is researching ways physical therapists can incorporate play and problem solving to help kids achieve important cognitive and social milestones.
"She seems to thrive on the problem solving," said Kelsey's mom Jenna Bushnell. "Especially when she gets a challenge to where she has to figure out a new way to solve it. That seems to really intrigue her."
Traditional physical therapies for infants use play as a motivator, but here, it's integrated into the intervention. Exercises in Harbourne's study might include getting a baby to pull on a table cloth to reach a toy, or hitting a ball with a hammer to push it through a hole.
The way Kelsey figured out how to grab the microphone cord by herself shows progress.
“So that’s kind of building in her brain this connection between, ‘Oh, I don’t have to have somebody give it to me. I can move my body around and get to the thing I’m interested in,’” said Harbourne. “She’s getting a lot more skillful in her sitting skills.”
Harbourne hopes to publish her findings in a couple years. In the meantime she’s looking for more babies to participate in the study.
