Action funding has shown how a simple play intervention with very premature babies, using Velcro-covered mittens, can help improve learning and cognitive development.
Around 8,000 babies born in the UK every year are very premature, born before 32 weeks of pregnancy, and many go on to have learning difficulties. There is an urgent need to develop effective intervention programmes, especially ones implemented during infancy while the brain is developing rapidly.
Previous research with three-month-old, full-term babies had shown that they benefit from play involving sticky mittens. These are mittens that are Velcro-covered and can be used with Velcro-covered toys to enable infants to grab toys simply by swiping and touching them. Play experiences with sticky mittens give infants a head start in developing exploratory behaviours like touching and moving objects. These activities are fundamental to their learning. However, the potential benefits of sticky mittens had never been tested with babies born very prematurely.
Dr Ruth Ford at Anglia Ruskin University, and a team of researchers from the Universities of Nottingham and Leicester, and Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, aimed to investigate whether play experiences using sticky mittens could similarly benefit babies who had been born very early.
The researchers worked with families when their babies were three months old corrected for prematurity. One group of babies used sticky mittens and toys for five minutes a day for three weeks, and another group watched their caregiver move toys around for the same amount of time. The two groups were compared before and after the intervention – with the babies using sticky mittens showing significant improvements in exploratory behaviors, especially oral exploration of toys. The researchers now plan to explore the long-term benefits.
This research, which has been published in ScienceDirect, could influence UK policy on post-discharge care for very premature infants by promoting this simple, home-based intervention, which can be carried out by parents or carers to support their child’s development.
We aim to help parents support their preterm baby’s learning at a very early age, using simple activities that can be carried out quickly and easily at home. The support from Action Medical Research has been invaluable in making this project happen”