How Perception and Action Fosters Exploration and Selection in Infant Skill Acquisition

Infant sensorimotor decoupling from 4 to 9 months of age: Individual differences and contingencies with maternal actions

Triadic interactions, wherein infants coordinate attention between caregivers and objects of shared focus, are believed to facilitate infant learning, and emerge around 9-12 months of age (Carpenter et al., 1998). Sensorimotor decoupling, wherein infants look at one percept while manipulating another, or use each hand for different actions, was hypothesized (de Barbaro et al., 2016) to contribute to triadic skills by allowing infants to smoothly shift attention between objects and social partners. We explored the development of Hand-Hand (H-H) and Gaze-Hand (G-H) decoupling in 38 infants at 4, 6, and 9 months. We also tested contingencies between maternal behaviors and infant decoupling: i.e., whether decoupling events followed maternal object-directed actions. Both overall and contingent infant decoupling increased from 4 to 9 months. Decoupling rates (both G-H and H-H) predicted variance in infants' fine and gross motor scores. Contingent G-H decoupling at 6 months predicted BSID-III communication scores at 18 months. Thus the development of infant sensorimotor skills, including decoupling, allows infants to smoothly shift attention and participate in triadic interactions.

Outcomes and Hand Use of Reaching Attempts: Comparison of Infants at Risk for Developmental Disability and Infants With Typical Development

Background

Infants at risk for developmental disabilities often show signs of motor delay. Reaching is a skill that can help us identify atypical motor trajectories in early infancy. Researchers have studied performance after onset of reaching, but none have followed infants at risk from pre-reaching to skilled reaching.

Aims

We assessed differences in reaching outcomes and hand use as reaching skill emerged in infants at risk for developmental disabilities and with typical development.

Methods and Procedures

We followed infants at risk for developmental disabilities (n = 11) and infants with typical development (n = 21) longitudinally as they developed reaching skill. Infants reached for a toy at midline while sitting in the caregiver's lap. Video data were coded for reach outcome (miss, touch, partial grasp, and whole-hand grasp) and hand use (right, left, and bilateral).

Outcomes and Results

Infants at risk had a larger proportion of missed reaches across visits compared to infants with typical development. Infants at risk also showed less variability in hand use when grasping over the study period.

Conclusion and Implications

Our results provide information to support early differences in reaching performance to inform identification of typical and atypical developmental trajectories. Future studies should assess how the missed reaches are different and consider other quantitative measures of movement variability in infants at risk.

"May I Grab Your Attention?": An Investigation Into Infants' Visual Preferences for Handled Objects Using Lookit as an Online Platform for Data Collection

We examined the relation between 4- to 12-month-old infants' (N = 107) motor development and visual preference for handled or non-handled objects, using Lookit (lookit.mit.edu) as an online tool for data collection. Infants viewed eight pairs of objects, and their looking was recorded using their own webcam. Each pair contained one item with an easily graspable “handle-like” region and one without. Infants' duration of looking at each item was coded from the recordings, allowing us to evaluate their preference for the handled item. In addition, parents reported on their infants' motor behavior in the previous week. Overall, infants looked longer to handled items than non-handled items. Additionally, by examining the duration of infants' individual looks, we show that differences in infants' interest in the handled items varied both by infants' motor level and across the course of the 8-s trials. These findings confirm infant visual preferences can be successfully measured using Lookit and that motor development is related to infants' visual preferences for items with a graspable, handle-like region. The relative roles of age and motor development are discussed.

Perception, Action, and Intrinsic Motivation in Infants’ Motor-Skill Development

Perception, action, and intrinsic motivation play an essential role in early development, promoting the creation and refinement of new and more complex forms of behaviors as infants try a range of sensorimotor patterns in their environment. I use the example of infants’ reaching to illustrate how goal-directed action emerges from the intersection of seemingly distinct visual and proprioceptive-tactile-motor spaces that form in the early months following birth. The intersection of these two spaces begins with a casual contingent event involving vision and action: when the hand happens to contact a target. This event, which marks the onset of reaching, provides new behavioral value, reinforces the motor action, and intrinsically motivates infants to attempt to reproduce the behavior. Subsequent repeated cycles of perception and action lead to the exploration of a range of motor responses and a progressive alignment of the visual space with the proprioceptive-tactile-motor space, ultimately fostering the selection and refinement of increasingly successful and refined reaching patterns. Extensive hands-on experience in the environment and learning about the immediate outcomes of actions play a critical role in shaping behavioral development.

Spatial, But Not Temporal, Kinematics of Spontaneous Upper Extremity Movements Are Related to Gross and Fine Motor Skill Attainment in Infancy

Background: Spontaneous upper extremity movements in infancy provide insight on neuromotor development. Spatiotemporal kinematics have been used to evaluate typical development of reaching, a foundational motor skill in infancy. This study evaluates the relationship between spontaneous upper extremity movements, not elicited by a toy, and motor skill attainment. Methods: N = 12 healthy infants (2–8 months) participated in this longitudinal study (one to four sessions). Motor skills were assessed with the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, 3rd Edition: gross motor subtest (GM) and fine motor subtest. Spontaneous upper extremity movements were collected using 3D motion capture technology. Infants were placed in supine for three to twelve 30-s trials, and their movements were recorded. Repeated measure correlation coefficients (Rmcorr) were used to evaluate relationships between variables. Results: There were significant, moderate, positive relationships between the straight distance from start to end of a movement and (a) fine motor score (Rmcorr = .55, p = .03), (b) GM score (Rmcorr = .63, p = .01), and (c) age (Rmcorr = .56, p = .02). There was a significant, moderate, negative relationship between straightness ratio and GM score (Rmcorr = −.52, p = .047). Discussion: Fine and GM skills are related to the straight distance from start to end of a movement and the straightness ratio of underlying spontaneous upper extremity movements.

Let's Cross the Next One: Parental Scaffolding of Prospective Control Over Movement

This investigation examined parental scaffolding of children's prospective control over decisions and actions during a joint perception-action task. Parents and their 6-, 8-, 10-, and 12-year-old children (N = 128) repeatedly crossed a virtual roadway together. Guidance and control shifted from the parent to the child with increases in child age. Parents more often chose the gap that was crossed and prospectively communicated the gap choice with younger than older children. Greater use of an anticipatory gap selection strategy by parents predicted more precise timing of entry into the gap by children. This work suggests that social interaction may serve as an important experiential mechanism for the development of prospective control over decisions and actions in the perception-action domain.

12- and 24-Month-Old Infants' Search Behavior Under Informational Uncertainty

Infants register and react to informational uncertainty in the environment. They also form expectations about the probability of future events as well as update the expectation according to changes in the environment. A novel line of research has started to investigate infants' and toddlers' behavior under uncertainty. By combining these research areas, the present research investigated 12- and 24-month-old infants' searching behaviors under varying degree of informational uncertainty. An object was hidden in one of three possible locations and probabilistic information about the hiding location was manipulated across trials. Infants' time delay in search initiation for a hidden object linearly increased across the level of informational uncertainty. Infants' successful searching also varied according to probabilistic information. The findings suggest that infants modulate their behaviors based on probabilistic information. We discuss the possibility that infants' behavioral reaction to the environmental uncertainty constitutes the basis for the development of subjective uncertainty.