Infant Drowning Prevention: Insights from a New Ecological Psychology Approach

Carolina Burnay, David I. Anderson, Chris Button, Rita Cordovil and Amy E. Peden
Additional contact information
Carolina Burnay: School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Otago, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand
David I. Anderson: Marian Wright Edelman Institute, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA
Chris Button: School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Otago, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand
Rita Cordovil: CIPER, Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, Universidade de Lisboa, 1495-751 Cruz Quebrada, Portugal
Amy E. Peden: School of Population Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health, UNSW Sydney, Kensington, NSW 2052, Australia

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 8, 1-9

Abstract: Drowning causes significant mortality and morbidity globally, and infants (0–4 years of age) are disproportionately impacted. In a groundbreaking approach to pediatric drowning prevention, ecological psychology has been used to investigate the relationship between infants’ perceptual–motor development and their behavior around bodies of water. In this review, we summarize recent research findings in the field of ecological psychology and apply these to the prevention of infant drowning. Studies have linked infants’ avoidance of falls into the water with locomotor experience and type of accessway into bodies of water. Through crawling experience, infants learn to perceive the risk of falling into water and start adapting their behavior to avoid drop-offs leading into water. Infants tend to enter deep water more when the access is via a slope than via a drop-off. We propose that ecological psychology can enhance infant drowning prevention interventions. The aim is to create an additional layer of protection, the perceptual information layer, in addition to existing strategies, such as supervision and barriers. This new protective layer can be a powerful tool to further highlight the risk of entering the water and reduce infant drowning-related mortality and morbidity.

Keywords: epidemiology; water safety; affordances; water cliff; water slope; child; development; environment; risk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/8/4567/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/8/4567/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:8:p:4567-:d:790891

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().