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Infant Sitting Status, Sitting Age, and Everyday Positioning Experience Across the Transition to Independent Sitting

Kari S Kretch1, Aylin Luna2, Caitlin M Fausey3

  • 1University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies
|December 18, 2025
PubMed

Insights

Infant sitting skills change daily positioning, with sitting experience replacing time spent on the back. Sitting development impacts how babies spend their floor time, but adult restraint decreases with age.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental psychology
  • Infant motor development
  • Postural control

Background:

  • Infants' everyday positioning is fundamental to development.
  • Acquisition of postural skills, like sitting, significantly alters positioning experiences.
  • Understanding how positioning changes with skill development is crucial for infant research.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between sitting status, sitting age, and infants' everyday positioning.
  • To determine how the development of sitting skills influences the amount of time infants spend in various positions.
  • To identify predictors of increased sitting experience in infants.

Main Methods:

  • Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) was used to capture real-time positioning data.
  • Caregivers reported infants' positions repeatedly throughout daily activities.
  • Data were collected from 43 infants at 4, 5, 6, and/or 7 months of chronological age.

Main Results:

  • Chronological age and overall sitting age predicted increased sitting experience.
  • Sitting experience increased as supine (on the back) experience decreased.
  • Time infants spent restrained by an adult decreased with chronological age.

Conclusions:

  • The development of sitting skills fundamentally alters the composition of infants' unrestrained floor time.
  • Overall sitting age, not hands-free sitting age, was a key predictor of sitting experience.
  • Infant positioning evolves continuously with the acquisition of motor milestones.

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