The Relationship Between Maternal Physical Activity during Late Pregnancy and Infant Motor Development
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Physical activity is beneficial for pregnant women and their offspring. Exercise during pregnancy may elicit improvements in the brain/neurodevelopment of offspring; however, it is unknown whether or not physical activity during pregnancy is connected to infant motor development. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between maternal physical activity during late pregnancy and infant motor development at four months of age. METHODS: Physical activity was objectively assessed during late pregnancy (32-39 weeks gestation) via a wrist worn accelerometer. The amount of time spent sedentary and participating in light and moderate exercises were calculated for one week. Within 48 hours of birth, surveys were given to participants to complete prospectively with information on time their infant spends in different positions (supine, prone, supported sitting and standing), infant feeding practices (breastfed vs. formula-fed), and other factors that could contribute to infant motor development during the first 4 months of life. Between 4 and 4.5 months of age, the motor development of the child was assessed by a board-certified pediatric physical therapist using the well-validated Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS). RESULTS: Thirty women-infant pairs participated in the study (n=30). Infant motor development percentiles were not correlated to time spent sedentary (r=-.02, p=.94), time spent participating in light activity (r=-.03, p=.88), or time spent participating in moderate activity during late pregnancy (r=.04, p=.85). In addition, there was not a significant relationship between infant motor scores and the total time an infant spent in prone (“tummy time”) (r=.06, p=.81). Interestingly, infants who were exclusively breastfed at 4 months had a significantly higher mean motor score percentiles compared to those who were on formula (19.0 vs. 15.8, p=0.003). CONCLUSIONS: There was no relationship between maternal physical activity levels during late pregnancy and infant motor development at four months of age. However, infants who were still breastfed at 4 months of age had higher motor development percentiles. The long-term implications of these data are substantial as motor performance in infancy is linked to an improved-cognitive function in school-age children.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".