Enhancing Early Learning for Infants with Disabilities: A Responsive Parenting Intervention
Project Description:
Children with physical disabilities associated with spina bifida and cerebral palsy face multiple challenges due to early physical and cognitive difficulties that impact their learning and later academic performance and independence. Parents of these children have the greatest potential for influencing their development due to the number of opportunities they have to interact with their children. However, the field of early intervention often fails to engage parents as active and primary mediators of the developmental services their children receive. Parenting interventions have included teaching responsiveness strategies resulting in improved child development/learning outcomes, or motor support strategies resulting in improved motor learning and development, but rarely are the two types of interventions combined.
This study will investigate whether an integrated parent responsiveness and motor support intervention that targets the specific motor, attention, and organization deficits among infants with physical disabilities results in greater improvements in core skills (attention, motor learning, contingency learning, and goal directed play) and outcomes (cognition, language, social and emotional competence, and motor performance) compared to an intervention that focuses on responsiveness only and a control group receiving developmental information.
Core Function(s):
Performing Research or Evaluation, Other Direct/Model Services, Demonstration Services
Area of Emphasis
Education & Early Intervention, Child Care-Related Activities, Quality of Life
Target Audience:
Family Members/Caregivers, Children/Adolescents with Disabilities/SHCN
Unserved or Under-served Populations:
Other
Primary Target Audience Geographic Descriptor:
State
COVID-19 Related Data:
N/A
