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Task constraints and infant grip configurations
Author(s) -
Newell K. M.,
Scully D. M.,
McDonald P. V.,
Baillargeon Renée
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.420220806
Subject(s) - prehensile tail , object (grammar) , action (physics) , task (project management) , psychology , sensory system , physical medicine and rehabilitation , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , communication , artificial intelligence , computer science , medicine , engineering , anatomy , physics , systems engineering , quantum mechanics
The prehensile grip configurations of infants aged 4 through 8 months were examined as they grasped objects that varied in size and shape. The findings revealed that infants as young as 4 months systematically differentiate grip configurations as a function of the object properties in essentially the same way that 8‐month‐old infants do. However, the younger 4‐month‐old infants predominantly used the haptic system in additional to the visual system for information pick‐up regarding object properties, whereas 8‐month‐old infants predominantly used information from the visual system alone to differentiate grip configurations according to the object properties. Infants apparently percive the same action‐relevent information through different emphases of the sensory modes to drive the action system with a similar grip configuration for a given object. It is proposed that the traditional description of an orderly sequence to the development of infant prehension (e.g., Halverson, 1931) is too conservative and inflexible to capture the functionally adaptive prehensile behavior of infants to changing task constraints.