Crawling Experience Predicts Avoidance of Real Cliffs and Water Cliffs: Insights from a New Paradigm

Effect of baby swimming lessons on infants' avoidance of bodies of water

Despite the popularity of infant swimming programs, no evidence exists to determine whether they influence infants' judgments and behavior when confronted with bodies of water. We conducted two separate studies examining if the total number of swimming sessions an infant participated in predicted whether they avoided a body of water they could enter via an edge (Study 1-Water Cliff: n = 101 infants) or a slope (Study 2-Water Slope: n = 77 infants). The results revealed a significant interaction between number of sessions and type of entry into the water. Infants who participated in 10 or more sessions were more likely to avoid falling on the edge leading into the water but entered the water significantly more if they could access it via a slope. These findings suggest that while experience in baby swimming programs can promoted more adaptive behaviors on drop-offs leading into bodies of water, sloped entries may heighten drowning risks for young children with greater familiarity with water. Because we tested the two groups of infants in different countries, further research is warranted to determine if cultural differences in child rearing practices or variations in the content and/or teaching of the swimming programs might explain these intriguing findings.

Stimulating the motor development of very premature infants: effects of early crawling training on a mini-skateboard

Aim

To examine the effects of an early home-based 8-week crawling intervention performed by trained therapists on the motor and general development of very premature infants during the first year of life.

Methods

At term-equivalent age, immediately following discharge from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), we randomly allocated 44 premature infants born before 32 weeks' gestation without major brain damage to one of three conditions in our intervention study: crawling on a mini-skateboard, the Crawliskate (Crawli), prone positioning control (Mattress), or standard care (Control). The Crawli and Mattress groups received 5 min daily at-home training administered by trained therapists for 8 consecutive weeks upon discharge from the NICU. The outcomes of greatest interest included gross motor development (Bayley-III) at 2, 6, 9, and 12 months (primary outcome) corrected age (CA), mature crawling at 9 months CA and general development at 9 and 12 months CA [Ages and Stages Questionnaires-3 (ASQ-3)]. The study was registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov; registration number: NCT05278286.

Results

A 3 (Condition) × 4 (Age) repeated measures ANOVA revealed that Crawli group infants had significantly higher Bayley-III gross motor development scores than Mattress and Control group infants. Crawli group infants also scored significantly higher on groups of Bayley-III items related to specific motor skills than infants in the other groups, including crawling at 9 months CA. We found significant differences in favor of the Crawli group in separate one-way ANOVAs at each of the ages we examined. A 3 (Condition) × 2 (Age) repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the Crawli group scored significantly higher than the Control group for the ASQ-3 total score and communication score and significantly higher for the fine motor score than the Control and Mattress groups. We found additional significant differences in favor of the Crawli group for other dimensions of the ASQ-3 in separate one-way ANOVAs at 9 and 12 months CA.

Interpretation

Early crawling training on a Crawliskate provides an effective way to promote motor and general development in very premature infants. The findings also provide clear evidence for a link between newborn crawling and more mature crawling later in development.

Locomotion development and infants' object interaction in a day‐care environment

This longitudinal study examined the relationship between the development of locomotion and infants' interaction with others involving objects. Observations took place in a multi-person situation-a day-care class-for one-year-old infants for 1 year. The study participants were 13 infants and 7 caregivers (all Japanese). Frequencies of infants' manual contact with objects and moving before contact with them did not differ according to locomotion developmental level. However, infants who began walking engaged in more social interactions than those who were cruising or crawling. Throughout all locomotor developmental periods, social interactions increased in frequency when more caregivers were present. As infants began to walk, they moved more prior to social interactions, had more frequent bidirectional and triadic social interactions, and moved and interacted more often with others during a single object episode. These results suggest that crawlers' engagement with objects is relatively object-oriented, while for walkers, locomotion seems to be driven by social stimuli. Infants who have begun to walk moved among caregivers and peers in a multi-person environment and developed more elaborated social interactions through objects.

Infant Drowning Prevention: Insights from a New Ecological Psychology Approach

Drowning causes significant mortality and morbidity globally, and infants (0-4 years of age) are disproportionately impacted. In a groundbreaking approach to pediatric drowning prevention, ecological psychology has been used to investigate the relationship between infants' perceptual-motor development and their behavior around bodies of water. In this review, we summarize recent research findings in the field of ecological psychology and apply these to the prevention of infant drowning. Studies have linked infants' avoidance of falls into the water with locomotor experience and type of accessway into bodies of water. Through crawling experience, infants learn to perceive the risk of falling into water and start adapting their behavior to avoid drop-offs leading into water. Infants tend to enter deep water more when the access is via a slope than via a drop-off. We propose that ecological psychology can enhance infant drowning prevention interventions. The aim is to create an additional layer of protection, the perceptual information layer, in addition to existing strategies, such as supervision and barriers. This new protective layer can be a powerful tool to further highlight the risk of entering the water and reduce infant drowning-related mortality and morbidity.

Do infants avoid a traversable slope leading into deep water?

Ramps used to access swimming pools are designed with a shallow slope that affords easy access for all including infants. Locomotor experience has been linked to infants' avoidance of falling into the water from drop-offs; however, the effect of such experience on infants' behavior when a slope is offered to access the water has not been addressed. Forty-three crawling infants (M_age  = 10.63 ± 1.91 months; M_crawling  = 2.38 ± 1.77 months) and 34 walking infants (M_age  = 14.90 ± 2.18 months; M_walking  = 2.59 ± 1.56 months) were tested on a new Water Slope paradigm, a sloped surface (10°) leading to deep water. No association between infants' avoidance of submersion and locomotor experience was found. Comparison with the results of infants' behavior on the water cliff revealed that a greater proportion of infants reached the submersion point on the water slope than fell into the water cliff. Collectively, these results indicate a high degree of specificity in which locomotor experience teaches infants about risky situations. Importantly, sloped access to deep water appears to increase the risk of infants moving into the water thereby making them more vulnerable to drowning.

Experienced crawlers avoid real and water drop-offs, even when they are walking

Crawling experience was recently linked to crawling and walking infants' avoidance of falling on real and water cliffs, whereas walking experience had no effect on walkers' avoidance behavior (Burnay et al., 2021). In the current study, the behavior of 25 infants was analyzed on the Real Cliff/Water Cliff apparatus using a longitudinal study design. Infants were tested as experienced crawlers (M_crawling = 2.93 months, SD = 1.07), novice walkers (M_walking = 0.68 months, SD = 0.29), and experienced walkers (M_walking = 4.90 months, SD = 0.92). Infants avoided falling on both cliffs when tested as experienced crawlers and their behavior was not different when tested as novice or experienced walkers. These findings confirmed the effect of crawling experience on crawling and walking infants' avoidance of falls from heights and into water and the transfer of perceptual learning from crawling to walking postures.

Motor Development: Embodied, Embedded, Enculturated, and Enabling

Motor development and psychological development are fundamentally related, but researchers typically consider them separately. In this review, we present four key features of infant motor development and show that motor skill acquisition both requires and reflects basic psychological functions. ( a) Motor development is embodied: Opportunities for action depend on the current status of the body. ( b) Motor development is embedded: Variations in the environment create and constrain possibilities for action. ( c) Motor development is enculturated: Social and cultural influences shape motor behaviors. ( d) Motor development is enabling: New motor skills create new opportunities for exploration and learning that instigate cascades of development across diverse psychological domains. For each of these key features, we show that changes in infants' bodies, environments, and experiences entail behavioral flexibility and are thus essential to psychology. Moreover, we suggest that motor development is an ideal model system for the study of psychological development.

Development (of Walking): 15 Suggestions

Although a fundamental goal of developmental science is to identify general processes of change, developmental scientists rarely generalize beyond their specific content domains. As a first step toward a more unified approach to development, we offer 15 suggestions gleaned from a century of research on infant walking. These suggestions collectively address the multi-leveled nature of change processes, cascades of real-time and developmental events, the diversity of developmental trajectories, inter- and intraindividual variability, starting and ending points of development, the natural input for learning, and the roles of body, environment, and sociocultural context. We argue that these 15 suggestions are not limited to motor development, and we encourage researchers to consider them within their own areas of research.

The development of motor behavior

This article reviews research on the development of motor behavior from a developmental systems perspective. We focus on infancy when basic action systems are acquired. Posture provides a stable base for locomotion, manual actions, and facial actions. Experience facilitates improvements in motor behavior and infants accumulate immense amounts of experience with all of their basic action systems. At every point in development, perception guides motor behavior by providing feedback about the results of just prior movements and information about what to do next. Reciprocally, the development of motor behavior provides fodder for perception. More generally, motor development brings about new opportunities for acquiring knowledge about the world, and burgeoning motor skills can instigate cascades of developmental changes in perceptual, cognitive, and social domains. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1430. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1430 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.