This student story was published as part of the 2025 NASW Perlman Virtual Mentoring Program organized by the NASW Education Committee, providing science journalism experience for undergraduate and graduate students.
Story by Ananya Dash
Mentored and edited by Jennifer Carr
Anyone who’s ever tried to change a baby’s soiled shirt knows just how tricky it can be to get babies to hold still. The flailing arms and kicking legs during a change can fluster the most loving of relatives, but all those baby moves are a sign of good health. Movement is a necessary skill for babies to develop timely in life.
Movement is such an important part of development that doctors watch for babies to meet certain milestones, such as sitting, crawling, standing, or walking, during their first two years of life. Reaching these milestones by certain ages is a sign of optimal growth for babies. But measuring them reliably can be challenging as babies often shy away from displaying their full range of movement during trips to the doctor.
In a new study, researchers used a jumpsuit with sensors to track babies as they moved around at home. Researchers think that this type of smart wearable can help doctors spot growth delays in babies early — enabling them to intervene before it's too late.
Jumpsuit captures key movement milestones
The study included 134 babies and toddlers (aged 2 to 22 months) who wore the smart jumpsuit for at least an hour. The jumpsuit recorded various postures that babies took without any interference from their parents.
Using data from the jumpsuits, researchers developed an algorithm to predict when healthy babies reached their motor milestones such as sitting, crawling, standing, and walking. The algorithm is about as accurate at recognizing when babies hit the movement milestones as doctors assessing babies in person.
“These new technologies are certainly innovative in giving us new insights on motor development in babies,” said Lana B. Karasik, a developmental psychologist at City University of New York, who was not involved in the study. “They are effective for diagnosing motor skill delays to get particular treatments.”
Measuring milestones matter
Motor skills shape how babies explore, communicate, and play. Babies who can sit on their own and reach and grip objects can take in more information about their environment than babies lying on their bellies.
Exploring their surroundings also enables babies to collect information about the world and help their brains to understand and interpret it. This process, called perceptual information, helps to drive their motor skills even further. There’s a feedback loop between movement and brain.
“Measuring movement is the easiest way to detect any neurodevelopment defects in babies early in life,” said Manu Airaksinen, an academy research fellow at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and first author of the study.
Babies experiencing movement delays may be at greater risk of developing neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and other learning disabilities.
Making the jumpsuit an option for everyone
Currently, the jumpsuit excels at predicting motor milestones accurately in healthy babies, but has yet to be tested in babies with delayed motor development. If the jumpsuit catches milestone delays in babies from home, parents can inform doctors promptly about it. Timely treatment options can improve motor skills in the babies and aid in their overall brain development.
Airaksinen says that the jumpsuit can not only detect delays in growth milestones but also add to objectively measuring improvement in babies undergoing an intervention such as physiotherapy.
There’s another unexpected benefit of the jumpsuit. Karasik says that the jumpsuit can itself become a tool to capture the enormous variability of experiences that babies get while moving around and expand the definition of what it means to achieve a motor milestone.
Top image: A baby playing on a puzzle mat. Credit: UnSplash. Creator: Meruyert Gonullu
Ananya Dash
Jennifer Carr is a senior editor at Breastcancer.org.
The NASW Perlman Virtual Mentoring program is named for longtime science writer and past NASW President David Perlman. Dave, who died in 2020 at the age of 101 only three years after his retirement from the San Francisco Chronicle, was a mentor to countless members of the science writing community and always made time for kind and supportive words, especially for early career writers.
You can contact the NASW Education Committee at education@nasw.org. Thank you to the many NASW member volunteers who lead our #SciWriStudent programming year after year.
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