Effects of Baby Swimming on Motor and Cognitive Development: A Pilot Trial

Abstract

Contact with water, even from birth, may be an important experience for child development. In this work, we aimed to investigate if baby swimming might influence infant development in motor and cognitive domains. We assigned infants to either a 10-week baby swimming intervention ( n = 12; M age = 13 months ( SD) = 7) or a control group ( n = 15; M age = 22 months ( SD) = 6). We assessed motor development with the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales (2nd edition, PDMS-2) and cognitive development with core tests of executive functions: delayed response for working memory, object retrieval for inhibition, and A-not-B for response shifting. Non-parametric analyses revealed that infants in the baby-swimming group improved in gross, fine, and total motor skills, and showed marginally better inhibition speed and shifting accuracy, with associated gains of shifting accuracy and fine and total motor skills. Even with in this small-sized convenience sample, this pilot study revealed promising benefits from baby swimming on motor development that warrant further study. This preliminary work paves the way for replication and illustrates what effect sizes may be expected in sufficiently powered well-designed follow-up research targeted to aid the joint development of motor and cognitive skills as early as infancy.

Effects of Exposure to Formal Aquatic Activities on Babies Younger Than 36 Months: A Systematic Review

“…One pilot study [ 39 ] pointed to an increase in developmental percentile (measured using AIMS) after baby swimming program intervention. Similar results were found in cross-sectional studies showing significant improvements in gross [ 40 , 41 , 43 ], fine, and total motor development [ 41 ] in infants participating in swimming programs when compared with the control groups and that four-year-old children who previously participated in baby swimming programs had better scores in prehension (ball skills) and in static balance (one-leg balance) than children that did not participate in baby swimming programs [ 38 ]. In cognitive performance, no significant pre- or post-test differences were found in either the intervention or control group, only a marginal tendency towards intervention-related gains in inhibition speed and response selection (or shifting) accuracy [ 41 ].…”

“…The positive effect on child neurodevelopment reported by Garcia and colleagues in their systematic review [ 17 ] was confirmed for infants younger than 36 months in the present review. Although three studies had already been included in Garcia et al’s review [ 38 , 39 , 48 ], more recent studies confirmed the positive effects of aquatic activities exposure on infants’ development [ 41 , 42 , 43 , 49 ]. Baby swimming programs were associated with improvements in gross, fine, and total motor development [ 39 , 40 , 41 , 43 ] (even when the children are older [ 38 ]); improvement in motion perception [ 42 ]; and a tendency for an improvement in early executive function skills [ 41 ].…”

“…The present review established a positive association between time of baby swimming attendance and general motor skills improvement. Borioni et al [ 41 ] reported that 10 sessions of baby swimming were enough to increase the motor and cognitive skills of infants. Response shifting, also called cognitive flexibility, is the child’s capacity to shift from one mental set to another, adjusting to changing demands [ 41 ].…”

Keterampilan Motorik Kasar Anak Prasekolah: Analisis Program Intervensi Motorik

“…Perkembangan psikomotorik anak berusaha untuk membekali anak dengan keterampilan yang diperlukan untuk menjamin prestasi sekolah yang baik (Hudson & Willoughby, 2021). Keterampilan motorik dasar seperti melompat atau berlari berkorelasi dengan pencapaian kognitif di berbagai bidang seperti bahasa Inggris, matematika, olahraga, dan teknologi (Borioni et al, 2022;Sofyan et al, 2022). Aktivitas fisik terkait usia dan mampu meningkatkan fungsi kognitif (Gerten et al, 2022).…”

Special Section: Relationships Between Executive Function and Sports / Exercise

“…The first article in this series is a rare, provocative effort to influence infants’ EF through parent-infant swim training. Federica Borioni and her colleagues (2022) provided clear evidence that swim training in parent/baby pairings benefitted babies’ gross and fine motor development; they also offered preliminary but more equivocal suggestions of cognitive benefits for babies from this training. While EF is primarily mediated by frontal lobes of the brain and can only be reliably measured from late childhood, concomitant with rapid growth in the frontal lobes (Anderson, 2002), these authors applied creative cognitive measurement tools that suggest possible improvement in the emergence of object permanence in these infants after swim training.…”