Download Understanding Infant Development through Movement: Motor Development and more Slides Cognitive Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Motor Development: from perception to action Valentina Fantasia, Cognitive Psychology, What is motor development? “A stagelike progressions that transform babies from being unable even to lift their heads to being able to grab things off the supermarket shelves, chase the dog, and become active participants in family social life” (E. Thelen, 1995) Infants make experience of the world ONLY because they CAN MOVE • The content of their thoughts, perceptions, emotions, intentions can be understood from overt motor behaviours • Movement is necessary to discover own body- boundaries and movements in space and time (sense of agency) • Studying motor development is the key to understand infants’ social cognition Moving means exploring Exploratory movements • are prompted by the perception or interest towards someone/something • provide the perceptual basis for guiding actions (moving is perceiving NEW things!) – The case of grasping and reaching Grasping and reaching New models for motor development 1. Dynamic Systems Theory: focuses on the formal structure of movements with the aim of building a unified theory of development (E. Thelen, L. Smith & D. Corbetta) 2. Ecological approach: emphasizes the connection between perception and actions in an effort to understand the psychological underpinnings of motor development (E. Gibson) Dynamic System Theory • Challenges the idea that developmental changes are driven by some factor or set of factors, located in the environment, the brain, or the genes. à All these factors are equally important • Motor development may result from the spontaneous self-organization of the various components in the body (e.g., Thelen & Smith, 1994) • Possibilities for action depend on the size, shape, mass, compliance, strength, flexibility, and coordination of the various body parts. – Biomechanical constraints on action – Multi-causality of action, including the physical, energetic, and physiological components Walking • Walking development Requires: – Acquisition of locomotion involves an initial decrement in performance. – Acquisition of sufficient arm strength to push up and keep balance with legs – Practicing of new balancing act, sometimes rocking back and forth rhythmically – Starts early as stepping reflex Pre- walking: newborns stepping reflex • Newborn infants, when held upright with their feet on a support surface, perform alternating, step-like movements • Within a few months, these movements "disappear”: Infants do not step again until late in the first year, when they start walking Why? Motor development is a perception-action system 1. Meaningful actions are always goal directed Motor development is a perception-action system 1. Meaningful actions are always goal directed 2. Infants achieve their goals by detecting and adapting to changes in their surrounding environments Motor development is a perception-action system 1. Meaningful actions are always goal directed 2. Infants achieve their goals by detecting and adapting to changes in their surrounding environments 3. Flexibility and Specificity in learning to detect affordances for action Perception • Specifies the current status of the body and the environment in which it is embedded, giving infants access to the current constraints on action (Gibson, 1979). • Allows actions to be planned prospectively and links action to the environment Fundamental for action? YES • Through perceptual information infants can – guide their movements prospectively and adaptively (von Hofsten, 2003, 2004) – Explore and discover the world! • Possibilities for action depend on AFFORDANCES Moving is perceiving • The coupling between action an perception is high-wired and morphologically pre- structured in the human brain since birth (von Hofsten, 2007) • Motor actions complete the perception- action loop by generating information for perceptual systems – Linking the appropriate sensory apparatus to the available information
