Infant lab in search of pre-term babies

Don't be alarmed if you hear a baby's cry while walking through Modular 1.
Hidden in Modular 1 is the Infant Development Lab, where Lakshmi Gogate and select undergraduate students have been conducting studies about infant language development.

However, the lab is struggling.

They are reaching the end of their grant period and are having trouble recruiting mothers and their infants as participants.

The research is being funded by an FGCU research grant and by the March of Dimes, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health of babies.
The current study in the lab compares language development in pre-term and full-term infants. According to the Infant Development Lab website, pre-term infants are at a greater risk for developmental delays in language due to immature sensory and motor systems.

"We've been able to get a good number of full-term infants to participate, but our main focus now is to get more pre-term infants," said Dr. Madhavi Maganti, who is conducting her post-doctorate research in the lab.

The longitudinal study, which is expected to end in May 2011, focuses on the infant's ability to pair words with objects.

The mother is given time to teach her infant what an object is by saying the name of the object and moving the object around.

Then, the infant is placed in front of a screen that plays video clips of the toys. In half of the clips, the word and the object match up, and in the other half, they don't.
Two observers see how long the infant is attending to the clips to determine if they've learned the object.

According to the Infant Development Lab's website, a delay in the ability to pair words and objects may lead to a delay in language development. If word-object pairing predicts language development, earlier diagnoses and interventions could be done to prevent at-risk infants.

"It's definitely rewarding knowing that the research I'm helping with now can have an impact in the future in determining how infants learn language," said Paul Milford, a senior majoring in psychology and a student in Gogate's directed study course.
Milford originally joined the lab because he thought it would be a great opportunity to get first-hand experience. Maganti, who has worked with about 700 infants in the past, said this study has given her the best experience.

"This experience has been a very different (one), in terms of knowing a lot about the language of babies and especially comparing full-term and pre-term," she said.
"That's the most exciting and curious part."

Maganti also enjoys working with local doctors and pediatricians, who have been recruiting many infants for the study. "The support is also rewarding," she said.

• If you would like to support the Infant Development Lab, call 239-590-7349.