'Sticky Mittens' Give Babies A Head Start

Tammy Tieu writes "Duke University psychologists have discovered that fitting infants with Velcro-covered 'sticky mittens' gives them a developmental jump start in learning to explore objects. The researchers placed the mittens on infants too young to actually grasp objects, but the mittens allowed the infants to snag Velcro-fitted toys merely by swiping at them. In comparisons with infants who hadn't used the mittens, found the psychologists, those who had used the mitten subsequently showed more sophisticated abilities to explore objects."

Comments

Reasonable study

[BigDaddy]

I'm glad to see that this study isn't claiming more than it logically can. From the article,

"There could have been a cognitive difference, in that the babies with the mittens received more experience in being an actor on the world and being able to produce observable consequences that created the differences," she said. "Or, it could have been that just the extra attention the mitten-using babies received from the parents -- perhaps motivating them to pay attention to objects or systematically bringing the babies' attention to objects."

This was the first thing that popped into my mind when I read the brief. In fact, I would have said a better method would have been to use three groups to control for parental interaction.

• Group One: This group would have the sticky mittens and the 10-minute per day regimine.
• Group Two: This group would have similar toys and similar instructions to parents for interaction, but without the mittens.
• Group Three: This group would have neither of the above. Purely control.

I think the results for such a study would be much more externally valid. This study would have really benefitted from controlling for the variable of parental interaction.