A Non-Randomized Pilot Study on the Benefits of Baby Swimming on Motor Development

Abstract

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.