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Movement Training Advances the Emergence of Reaching in Infants Born at Less Than 33 Weeks of Gestational Age: A Randomized Clinical Trial

JC Heathcock, PT, PhD, is Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University, 453 Atwell Hall, Columbus, OH 43210 (USA).
M Lobo, PT, PhD, is Post-doctoral Researcher, University of Delaware, Newark, Del.
JC Galloway, PT, PhD, is Associate Professor, University of Delaware.

jill.heathcock{at}osumc.edu

Background and Purpose: This study had 2 purposes: (1) to compare the emergence of reaching in infants born full-term and infants born at less than 33 weeks of gestational age and (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of a movement training program on the emergence of reaching in this preterm population.

Participants: Twenty-six infants born at less than 33 weeks of gestational age and with a birth weight less than 2,500 g were randomly assigned to receive 20 minutes of daily movement training (PT-M group) or daily social training (PT-S group) and were compared with 13 infants born full-term (FT-S group).

Methods: Reaching and hand-object interactions were tested every other week for 8 weeks. At each visit, infants were allowed six 30-second opportunities to contact a midline toy.

Results: The FT-S and PT-M groups reached earlier and more consistently than the PT-S group. Specifically, the subjects in the FT-S group contacted the toy for longer durations and with an open, ventral surface of their hand. The PT-M group demonstrated increases in the number of hand-object contacts, the number of consistent reaches, and the percentage of time interacting with the toy and the surface of hand-object contact.

Discussion and Conclusion: This project demonstrates that there are early gross motor skill differences in infants born at less than 33 weeks of gestational age. A caregiver-based daily training program, however, is effective at lessening some, but not all, of these differences over the short term.