The Influence of Active and Passive Motion Experience on Infants' Visual Prediction Ability.

In the present study we examined whether infants' visual prediction abilities were related to different types of motion experiences. We tested 30 6-month-old infants on a visual-spatial prediction task in which they had to visually anticipate the locational reappearance of temporarily occluded moving objects. We assigned infants to one of three experience groups: active locomotion training, passive motion experience, and a no-training control group. We tested the infants' visual prediction abilities before and after these trainings. We found improved infant predictions at a post-training test only for passively trained infants (p = .015, d = -1.033; Bonferroni corrected). Thus, we conclude that infants' visual-spatial predictions of temporally occluded moving objects was facilitated by mere movement experience, even if passive. Visual information gathered during even passive movement seemed sufficient for visual prediction.

Locomotion training contributes to 6-month-old infants' mental rotation ability.

This study investigated whether a locomotion training contributes to mental rotation performance in infants. Thirty 6-month-old pre-locomotor infants were randomly assigned to either a locomotion training or a control group which received no training. The general status of motor and cognitive development measured with the Bayley Scales did not differ between the 2 groups. Mental rotation was compared before and after the trainings using a mental rotation task in which infants were habituated to a rotating object and then tested with the same habituation object presented in a previously unseen angle and the corresponding mirror object. Results revealed that only infants in the locomotion training group showed a significant change in their looking durations at the test objects (habituation vs. mirror) in the mental rotation task. This suggests that self-produced locomotion experience can affect infants' mental rotation.

The Relationship between Crawling and Emotion Discrimination in 9- to 10-Month-Old Infants.

The present study examined whether infants' crawling experience is related to their sensitivity to fearful emotional expressions. Twenty-nine 9- to 10-month-old infants were tested in a preferential looking task, in which they were presented with different pairs of animated faces on a screen displaying a 100% happy facial expression and morphed facial expressions containing varying degrees of fear and happiness. Regardless of their crawling experiences, all infants looked longer at more fearful faces. Additionally, infants with at least 6 weeks of crawling experience needed lower levels of fearfulness in the morphs in order to detect a change from a happy to a fearful face compared to those with less crawling experience. Thus, the crawling experience seems to increase infants' sensitivity to fearfulness in faces.

How 9-month-old crawling infants profit from visual-manual rotations in a mental rotation task.

Studies show that visual-manual object exploration influences spatial cognition, and specifically mental rotation performance in infancy. The current work with 9-month-old infants investigated which specific exploration procedures (related to crawling experience) support mental rotation performance. In two studies, we examined the effects of two different exploration procedures, manual rotation (Study 1) and haptic scanning (Study 2), on subsequent mental rotation performance. To this end, we constrained infants' exploration possibilities to only one of the respective procedures, and then tested mental rotation performance using a live experimental set-up based on the task used by Moore and Johnson (2008). Results show that, after manual rotation experience with a target object, crawling infants were able to distinguish between exploration objects and their mirror objects, while non-crawling infants were not (Study 1). Infants who were given prior experience with objects through haptic scans (Study 2) did not discriminate between objects, regardless of their crawling experience. Results indicated that a combination of manual rotations and crawling experience are valuable for building up the internal spatial representation of an object.

The positive influence of manual object exploration on predictive grasping for a moving object in 9-month-old infants.

The present study examined whether infants' manual prediction ability is related to different types of their manual object exploration behavior. Thirty-two 9-month-old infants were tested in a manual prediction task, in which they were encouraged to reach for a temporarily occluded moving object. All infants also participated in a manual exploration task, in which they could freely explore five toy blocks. Infants with a high number of haptic scans in the manual exploration task showed a higher prediction rate in the manual prediction task compared to infants with a low haptic scan score. Reaction times of all infants decreased during the test blocks. However, the reaction time of infants with a high haptic scan score was faster in general. Our findings suggest that object experiences gathered by specific manual exploratory actions, such as haptic scans, are related to infants' predictive abilities when reaching and grasping for a temporarily occluded moving object.

Training of 7-month-old infants' manual object exploration skills: Effects of active and observational experience.

In the present study, a fine motor training was developed and evaluated in which infants were trained to manually explore objects in an advanced manner. Fifty 7-month-old infants were randomly assigned to three different training conditions: (1) to an active manual exploration training, in which they learned to explore objects efficiently, (2) to an observational manual exploration training, in which they observed how an adult performed sophisticated actions on objects, or (3) to a control group receiving no training. The results impressively indicate that infants with a low level of object exploration skill prior to the training showed the most training effects as compared to infants with proficient object exploratory actions. Interestingly, this differential training effect was true for both the active and observational training, highlighting the role of social learning in infancy. Importantly, our study shows for the first time the impact of normal individual variation in infants' manual object exploration skills on the effects of a fine motor training.