Considerable efforts have been devoted to map the relations between the home environment and selected aspects of child’s development. A recent instrument was developed that aimed at assessing the affordances in the home environment, the AHEMD-SR. Although the AHEMD-SR gave insight into affordances in the home, it was focused on two specific populations from the United States and Portugal. Currently, there is limited research regarding the validity of this instrument when used in different cultures. The purpose of this study was to compare a sample of Middle Eastern children to the normative sample that was used to validate the AHEMD. Results showed a significance difference between the socioeconomic statuses between the groups. Concerning factor analysis, results showed that the Lebanese group had five factors loading as did the American/Portuguese sample but with variables loading differently. Interestingly, the Lebanese group showed higher scores for affordances inside the home such replica toys and games. Our findings show that the state of the environment may play a role in the affordances and development. Future work is needed to look at the specific loading and possible variables that may be included in the AHMED-SR to look at other cultures that may have other limitations. 1. Introduction Recently there has been much attention investigating the relationship between motor development and the home environment. Perhaps the most notable contribution in this area is the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) inventory created by Caldwell and Bradley [1] that is used in numerous studies to examine environmental effects on cognitive and social development. Although the HOME inventory was originally designed to specifically examine the relationship of the home to the child’s motor development, one of the most striking and consistent HOME findings has been the strong relationship of the availability of stimulating play materials to motor development rather than the “global measures of environmental quality such as SES (socioeconomic status)”[2, page 217]. Although specific motor development measures in the home have been used (e.g., [3–6], Parks and Bradley, 1991,) there is still minimal information available in relation to the multidimensional effects of the home on motor development. In a review, Abbott et al. [7] concluded that the home environment is an important factor contributing to infant motor development but still little research exists examining this relationship. It was suggested that the need for “a valid measure
References
[1]
B. Caldwell and R. Bradley, Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, Ark, USA, 1984.
[2]
R. H. Bradley, B. M. Caldwell, S. L. Rock et al., “Home environment and cognitive development in the first 3 years of life: a collaborative study involving six sites and three ethnic groups in North America,” Developmental Psychology, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 217–235, 1989.
[3]
A. Abbott and D. Bartlett, “The relationship between the home environment and early motor development,” Physical and Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 43–57, 1999.
[4]
A. L. Abbott and D. J. Bartlett, “Infant motor development and equipment use in the home,” Child: Care, Health and Development, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 295–306, 2001.
[5]
K. E. Adolph and A. M. Avolio, “Walking infants adapt locomotion to changing body dimensions,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 1148–1166, 2000.
[6]
S. J. Bober, R. Humphry, H. W. Carswell, and A. J. Core, “Toddlers' persistence in the emerging occupations of functional play and self-feeding,” American Journal of Occupational Therapy, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 369–376, 2001.
[7]
A. L. Abbott, D. J. Bartlett, J. E. K. Fanning, and J. Kramer, “Infant motor development and aspects of the home environment,” Pediatric Physical Therapy, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 62–67, 2000.
[8]
L. P. Rodrigues, L. Saraiva, and C. Gabbard, “Development and construct validation of an inventory for assessing the home environment for motor development,” Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, vol. 76, no. 2, pp. 140–148, 2005.
[9]
J. J. Gibson, An Ecological Approach to Perception, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Mass, USA, 1979.
[10]
E. J. Gibson, Perceiving the Affordances: A Portrait of Two Psychologists, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, USA, 2002.
[11]
H. Heft, “The relevance of Gibson's ecological approach to perception for environment-behavior studies,” in Advances in Environment, Behavior, and Design, Volume 4: Toward the Integration of Theory, Methods, Research, and Utilization, G. T. Moore and R. W. Marans, Eds., pp. 71–108, Plenum Press, Environmental Design Research Association, New York, NY, USA, 1997.
[12]
N. Hirose, “An ecological approach to embodiment and cognition,” Cognitive Systems Research, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 289–299, 2002.
[13]
T. A. Stoffregen, “Affordances and events,” Ecological Psychology, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1–28, 2000.
[14]
P. Ca？ola, C. Gabbard, D. C. C. Santos, and A. C. T. Batistela, “Development of the affordances in the home environment for motor development-infant scale,” Pediatrics International, vol. 53, no. 6, pp. 820–825, 2011.
[15]
R. Saccani, N. C. Valentini, K. R. G. Pereira, A. B. Müller, and C. Gabbard, “Associations of biological factors and affordances in the home with infant motor development,” Pediatrics International, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 197–203, 2013.
[16]
E. Thelen, “Motor development: a new synthesis,” The American Psychologist, vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 79–95, 1995.
[17]
A. Haydari, P. Askari, and M. Z. Nezhad, “Relationship between afforadances in the home enviornemnt and motor development in children ages 18–42 months,” Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 319–328, 2009.
[18]
Y. H. Hsieh, A. W. Hwang, H. F. Liao, P. C. Chen, W. S. Hsieh, and P. Y. Chu, “Psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the home environment measure for motor development,” Disability and Rehabilitation, vol. 33, no. 25-26, pp. 2454–2463, 2011.
[19]
R. H. Bradley, B. M. Caldwell, and R. F. Corwyn, “The child care HOME inventories: assessing the quality of family child care homes,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 294–309, 2003.
[20]
C. Gabbard, P. Ca？ola, and L. P. Rodrigues, “A new inventory for assessing affordances in the home environment for motor development (AHEMD-SR),” Early Childhood Education Journal, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 5–9, 2008.
[21]
A. F. Miquelote, D. C. C. Santos, P. M. Cacola, M. I. Montebelo, and C. Gabbard, “Effects of the home environment on motor and cognitive behavior of infants,” Infant Behavior and Development, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 329–334, 2012.
[22]
H. L. Elzein and D. F. Ammar, “Parent and teacher perceptions of assessing Lebanese children's reaction towar-related stress: a survey of psychological and behavioral functioning,” Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 255–278, 2010.
