Determining if wearable sensors affect infant leg movement frequency.

Purpose: There is interest in using wearable sensors to measure infant leg movement patterns; however, they were not developed for infant use and their presence may adversely affect infant movement production. Their weight may discourage leg movement production, or their presence may annoy an infant and encourage higher rates of leg movement production. Our purpose was to determine whether wearable sensors affected the frequency of infant leg movements produced.

Method: We included 10 infants with typical development and 10 infants at risk of developmental delay, between 2 and 10 months' chronological age.

Results: After collecting and analyzing video recordings of infants, we found a negligible difference between the numbers of spontaneous leg movements made while infants wore sensors, compared to those without sensors.

Conclusions: Wearable sensors have a negligible effect on the frequency of infant leg movement production, supporting their use in infant movement analysis.