Elsevier

Infant Behavior and Development

Volume 15, Issue 2, April–June 1992, Pages 231-244
Infant Behavior and Development

Effect of postural position and reaching on gaze during mother-infant face-to-face interaction**

https://doi.org/10.1016/0163-6383(92)80025-PGet rights and content

Influences on the decline of infant-mother face-to-face gazing during social interaction were explored in this experimental study of 60 infants between the ages of 3 and 6 months. Infants interacted with their mothers without toys as their postural position was manipulated between sit, recline, and supine. The order was counterbalanced across subjects. Infants were also assessed for their ability at visually guided reaching. It was hypothesized that reaching skill and postural position would co-determine the duration of gazing at mother. In general, infants looked the most at their mothers when in the supine position, and the least when in sitting. Overall, reachers looked less at their mothers than nonreachers. The results suggest that postural position is an important factor in the regulation of attention during early infancy and has been overlooked in laboratory studies in which infants are observed while sitting in immobile infant seats. The social world of young infants is not, therefore, confined primarily to facial and vocal modalities of communication. The orientation and movement of infants' bodies and their sensorimotor skills are integral features of the infant's social experience.

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      The general thought being that infants learn to reach for and contact objects through the social, cognitive, perceptual, and motor benefits of moving their arms within the various physical and social contexts typical of their daily life. The initial emergence of reaching in turn impacts more global development as reflected in the influence of skilled reaching on an infant's future motor (Corbetta & Bojczyk, 2002; Goldfield, 1990), social (Fogel, Dedo, & McEwen, 1992; Fogel, Messsinger, Yale, Disckson, & Hsu, 1999), perceptual (Corbetta, Thelen, & Johnson, 2001; Eppler, 1995; Rochat, 1989), and cognitive development (Diedrich, Highlands, Spahr, Thelen, & Smith, 2001; Thelen, Schöner, Scheier, & Smith, 2001). Our recent cross-sectional and longitudinal work has focused on understanding the details of how infants, during the prereaching period, move their arms when a toy is presented as compared to without a toy present, and how infants adapt these ‘toy-oriented’ changes over the weeks leading up to the first reach (Bhat & Galloway, 2006; Bhat, Heathcock, & Galloway, 2005; Galloway & Thelen, 2003).

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    **

    This study was funded in part by a grant to the senior author from NIH (R01 HD21036).

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