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

consists in testing babies’ tendency to cross a transparent glass platform. Gibson, and other ecological psychologists after her, showed that right after starting to crawl babies tend to cross drop-offs but after some weeks of crawling experience, they start adapting their behaviour to avoid falls. What if instead of transparent glass, babies were tested on a water surface? Could we understand what is the difference between babies that fall and those that avoid falling in the water? I texted my Master’s supervisor, Rita, saying “I just had the most wonderful idea!”. When she asked what the idea was about, I panicked! What if it was investigated already? It is such an obvious idea, somebody else must have done it already. I told her I would meet her in one hour to tell her about my (hopefully) innovative idea. I combed through all the science journals I could and didn’t find a single study investigating babies’ relationship with bodies of water. I met with Rita and, with what I felt like my heart in my throat, said “What about instead of a visual cliff, a water cliff?”. Indeed, to my surprise, my panicked research held up, nobody before had investigated the effect of development on babies’ perception and action in and around water. Rita loved the idea and the ecological psychology approach to babies’ relationship with bodies of water was born. We first created the Real Cliff / Water Cliff apparatus, a platform which on one side has no protection from falling, the real cliff, and on the opposite side has a tub filled with water, the water cliff. The babies were tested once on each cliff. They were placed on the platform with their mothers on the far end of the cliffs and their safety was ensured by climbing equipment. The babies could freely explore the setup while looking for information to decide whether to go over the cliffs.

FIGURE 1 Real Cliff / Water Cliff apparatus

We tested more then 100 babies. Around 30% of the babies fell from both cliffs and the difference between babies that fell and those who avoided falling from both cliffs was the amount of crawling experience. As previous studies had shown, babies that had more crawling experience were able to adapt their behaviour and avoid falling from the real cliff and, for the first time, crawling experience was linked to babies’ avoidance of bodies of water. When crawling, babies touch the floor, they look at it very closely, they can even sometimes lick the floor while exploring this new capability, the self-locomotion! Through exploratory behaviour babies learn to perceive the need of a solid surface to crawl around on and if the solid surface suddenly disappears, they know they should go no further.

But what if the access into the water is not a sudden drop-off but a smooth slope? Would crawling experience affect babies’ behaviour in this case?

To answer this question, we created the Water Slope apparatus, a 10º declined platform leading into 75cm deep water, installed on a laboratorial swimming flume existing at the University of Otago, New Zealand. We tested almost 100 kiwi babies and, contrary to what was observed on the water cliff, on the water slope crawling experience had no impact on babies’ avoidance of deep water. It seems that although crawling experience teaches babies to perceive the risk of a sudden fall, into the water or not, it has no impact on babies’ perception of bodies of water as dangerous environments that should be avoided. Importantly, more babies got to deep water on the water slope than fell from the water cliff in the previous study. While on the water cliff only 30% of the babies fell in the water, on the water slope most of the babies (60%) reached the submersion point (water touching their chin). These results suggest that sloped accessways into the water increase the risk of drowning among young children.