Faculty Bibliography

Infants acquire independent mobility amidst a flux of body growth. Changes in body dimensions and variations in the ground change the physical constraints on keeping balance. The study examined whether toddlers can adapt to changes in their body dimensions and variations in the terrain by loading them with lead weights and observing how they navigated safe and risky slopes. Experiment 1 verified the reliability of a new psychophysical procedure for testing infants' responses in 2 experimental conditions. In Experiment 2, this procedure was used to compare infants' responses on slopes in feather-weight and lead-weight conditions. The lead weights impaired infants' ability to walk down slopes. Babies adapted to altered body dimensions by treating the same degree of slope as safe in the feather-weight condition but as risky in the lead-weight condition. Exploratory activity on the starting platform predicted adaptive responses on risky slopes.

We propose a sequential process of exploration that can account for perception-action coupling in infant locomotion. Each phase in the sequence is a process of obtaining progressively more information leading to a motor decision - exploration from a distance, exploration via direct contact, and exploration of alternative means. Quick glances and prolonged looking from afar serve to alert the perceiver to important changes in the terrain. Intentional touching and testing alternative ways to traverse an obstacle are only prompted when prior information indicates a potential threat to balance. We further propose that depth information is privileged because it can be detected from a distance more readily than other surface properties such as rigidity and friction. Studies of infants walking down slopes and across "hole/patch" transitions illustrate the important role of exploration in prospective control of locomotion. © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc.

This article presents a developmental account of changes in the visual guidance of locomotion. In contrast to the impressive efficiency of adult locomotion, locomotor activity is not under prospective control at the onset of human mobility. Infants require extensive crawling and walking experience before responding adaptively to variations in the terrain. At the same time that they are learning to navigate in increasingly varied environments, their bodies and skills are rapidly changing. Learning generalizes from safe, flat ground to novel surfaces but it does not transfer to new methods of locomotion. We account for these patterns of generality and specificity of learning by focusing on the role of exploratory behavior in detecting threats to balance control.

The effects of infants' age, body dimensions, and experience on the development of crawling was examined by observing 28 infants longitudinally, from children's first attempts at crawling until they began walking. Although most infants displayed multiple crawling postures en route to walking, development did not adhere to a strict progression of obligatory, discrete stages. In particular, 15 infants crawled on their bellies prior to crawling on hands and knees, but the other 13 infants skipped the belly-crawling period and proceeded directly to crawling on hands and knees. Duration of experience with earlier forms of crawling predicted the speed and efficiency of later, quite different forms of crawling. Most important, infants who had formerly belly crawled were more proficient crawling on hands and knees than infants who had skipped the belly-crawling period. Transfer could not be explained by differences in infants' age or body dimensions alone. Rather, experience using earlier crawling patterns may have exerted beneficial effects on hands-and-knees crawling by shoring up underlying constituents common to all forms of crawling postures.

This study was undertaken to determine whether young children, after only a few weeks standing experience, could respond adaptively to the dynamical constraints imposed by different support surfaces. The spontaneous postural motions of young children (13-14 months old) were observed as they stood on surfaces that differed in length, friction, and rigidity. There were no externally imposed perturbations to stance. Children's postural control was remarkably adaptive: There were few falls on any of the surfaces. Moreover, the children showed surface-specific utilization of manual postural control (holding onto wooden poles), suggesting that manual control is an adaptive strategy for postural control. Finally, kinematic analysis suggested that, in some instances, children were able to employ independent control of the hips, contrary to previous models which had suggested that hip motions could not be controlled before the age of 3 years. Small, slow hip movements useful in controlling spontaneous sway (unperturbed stance) may serve as a basis for the development of larger, faster hip movements that are associated with imposed perturbations. © 1997 Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc.