Regular Article
The Effect of Body Orientation to Gravity on Early Infant Reaching

https://doi.org/10.1006/jecp.1994.1047Get rights and content

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of body orientation with respect to gravity on infant′s reaching quantity and quality. Two groups, 12- to 19-week-old and 20- to 27-week-old infants, were seated in three positions: vertical (90° from horizontal), recline (60°), and supine (0°). Nine balls on a black board were presented. Video recordings were used to measure quantity of reaching (number and duration of reaches) and quality of reaching (open or closed hand, starting position of the arm, and position of touched and grasped balls). On the quantity measure there was a significant age × body position interaction that indicated that the 12- to 19-week-olds showed reaching behavior in the vertical position equal to that of 20- to 27-week-old infants in all positions. A similar tendency, although not significant, was found for the quality measurements. These findings indicate that the development of reaching does not just reflect maturation of the central nervous system, but a changing interaction between organismic and environmental constraints.

References (0)

Cited by (86)

  • A novel two-body sensor system to study spontaneous movements in infants during caregiver physical contact

    2019, Infant Behavior and Development
    Citation Excerpt :

    Caregivers hold infants in different positions for different purposes - for example, infants are held in a horizontal position during nursing but are held in a vertical position for burping and putting them to sleep. There is evidence that this change in position can influence spontaneous movements (Carvalho, Tudella, & Savelsbergh, 2007; Savelsbergh & van der Kamp, 1994). Savelsbergh and colleagues found that pre-reaching movements, a type of spontaneous movement behavior, increased when the infant was in the vertical position.

  • Cerebellar Prediction of the Dynamic Sensory Consequences of Gravity

    2019, Current Biology
    Citation Excerpt :

    Yet this ability is not innate. Instead, it is the result of a learning process that occurs throughout early childhood [65–69]. Furthermore, as reviewed above, the primate cerebellum shows rapid (trial-by-trial) updating during active horizontal head motion that is consistent with a cerebellum-based forward model that predicts the sensory consequences of active motion.

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text