Evaluating caregivers arrangement of infant sleeping environments in the home
A quick BST lesson plus nightly smartphone rewards keeps cribs clear of hazards for two weeks.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Mery et al. (2023) taught parents to set up safe infant sleep spaces. They used a short BST session in the family's home. After training, parents got tiny smartphone rewards when they texted photos of the crib each night.
The team tracked whether the crib stayed clear of loose blankets, bumpers, and toys for two full weeks.
What they found
Every parent arranged the crib correctly right after BST. The photo-based rewards kept the safe setup going for the whole two weeks.
No backsliding happened once the phone rewards kicked in.
How this fits with other research
Mery et al. (2022) did the groundwork. They showed that medical students could learn the same safe-sleep rules through BST and then teach others. The 2023 study jumps from training students to training parents directly and adds phone rewards to lock in the skill.
Shea et al. (2020) also sent caregiver training home without a live coach. Their online module taught mothers to copy baby sounds. Both papers prove that technology can keep BST alive after the trainer leaves the room.
Voulgarakis et al. (2017) looked at infant sleep too, but used parent praise to move a premature baby with apnea. The new study shifts the target from baby position to crib layout and uses digital reinforcers instead of social ones.
Why it matters
You can now give a 20-minute BST demo in the home and walk away. Pair it with a simple photo-reward app and parents keep the crib safe for weeks. No extra visits needed. Try this combo the next time you coach a new family.
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Join Free →After you model safe crib setup, ask the parent to snap one crib photo at bedtime and send it to an app that pings back praise or points.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Sleep-related infant deaths are one of the top causes of infant mortality in the United States. A few behavior analytic studies have examined behavioral skills training to teach adults to arrange safe infant sleeping environments. These studies were conducted in an analogue environment, and no data were collected outside the training setting. The purpose of the current study was to replicate and extend the extant literature. We taught caregivers to arrange safe infant sleeping environments in a community-based organization. Thereafter, we assessed the feasibility and effectiveness of a technology-based contingency management procedure to examine caregivers' adherence with arrangement of a safe sleeping environment for their newborns across a 2-week period. As in previous studies, behavioral skills training resulted in positive outcomes, and follow-up data suggested that the technology-based contingency management procedure may be a promising approach to promoting adherence with infant sleeping environment recommendations.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2023 · doi:10.1002/jaba.978