WHY BABIES DROWN? BY CAROLINA BURNAY RESEARCH FELLOW, SCHOOL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION, SPORT AND EXERCISE SCIENCES | UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO
What do we know about babies’ drowning and drowning prevention? Until recently, we knew numbers. We knew (and still know) that over half of all fatal unintentional drownings globally occur among children and young people under 25 years of age, with children 0-4 years of age recording the highest drowning rates (WHO, 2014). The epidemiological data tells us who drowns and were, but it doesn’t tell us why. The WHO (2014) suggested that young children are overrepresented in drowning statistics because they become mobile but are too young to recognize danger or to get out of water. But is this really true? Do babies drown because they don’t recognize the risk of bodies of water? The ecological psychology field investigates the relationship between humans and their environment and has long been used to investigate babies’ relationship with drop-offs. Although the ecological psychology has the potential to answer WHY babies drown, only recently has this approach started being used to investigate babies’ relationship with aquatic environments. I did my undergraduate degree in Physical Education and Sports Science in Lisbon University and have since acquired over 10 years of experience as a swimming teacher. Teaching swimming, especially to babies, fostered a passion for promoting fun and safe experiences for babies in water. In 2015 I decided to go back to the university to do a Master’s in Child Motor Development and study better ways to keep babies safe in the water. Studies of babies swimming are scarce and have mostly focused on swimming skills. Which in turn, is the reason why these studies are so uncommon, very rarely do babies (younger than 3 years of age) acquire any swimming skills at all. I was struggling to design a study to investigate what variables could be manipulated to enhance babies’ water safety. Until one day when I woke up with an idea that I though was just brilliant: adapting the classical visual cliff paradigm to babies’ relationship with bodies of water. The visual cliff was created by Eleanor Gibson in the 60’s and Continued on next page... USSWIMSCHOOLS.ORG | 25
