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The coupling of head, reach and grasp movement in nine months old infant prehension
Author(s) -
Savelsbergh Geert,
Von Hofstein Claes,
Jonsson Bert
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9450.00042
Subject(s) - psychology , grasp , movement (music) , head (geology) , physical medicine and rehabilitation , developmental psychology , coupling (piping) , communication , physics , medicine , acoustics , mechanical engineering , geomorphology , computer science , engineering , programming language , geology
In 9‐month‐old‐infants adjustments in the reaching pattern to sudden changes in object location were examined. An attractive ball was presented to the infants at their midline and on some trials (perturbation trials) the ball suddenly changed position 15 cm to the right or left during the reach. For the perturbed trials the movement times approximately doubled compared to the control trials and significantly fewer balls were grasped. The results indicate that infants need to finish the first movement before being able to redirect the reach to a new destination. The correlation between the latency of the head and hand adjustment to the perturbation were 0.85 and 0.78 for movements to the left and to the right, respectively, indicating a tight coupling. The time between the start of the perturbation and peak velocity (TPPV) was significantly shorter for the head movement than for the hand movement, indicating that the head is leading the hand.