Locomotion Training Influences Infants' Visual Prediction Ability

• In Event: Novel Findings and New Methods in Motor Skill Development, Perception, & Learning

Abstract

A strong relation between infants’ developing motor skills and their cognitive abilities has already been shown in several studies. Especially locomotion in the form of crawling seems to be a driving factor for the development of various visual-spatial abilities (for an overview see Campos et al. 2000). For example, Kubicek, Jovanovic, and Schwarzer (2017) showed that crawling 9-month-old infants outperformed non-crawling same-aged infants in their ability to predict the visual-spatial location of a moving and temporally occluded object. However, so far this study and thematically related studies cannot definitely determine whether crawling infants’ self-produced locomotion via crawling or only the encoding of the visual input gathered via crawling is the crucial factor of the relation between infants’ crawling ability and their ability to predict the location of an object. For that reason, we investigated this question in the current study. We conducted a training study with pre-locomotor 6- to 7-month-old infants who were randomly assigned to receive self-produced active locomotion experience, passive locomotion experience, or no locomotion experience at all. We compared the infants’ visual prediction ability using the task by Kubicek et al. (2017) before and after the interventions. In the active training group, we encouraged the infants who were sitting in a wheeled-walker on 9 days over a period of 3 weeks to locomote with the walker through a circular movement track. In the passive training group, infants were also sitting in the walker but were moved by the experimenter through the same track for the same amount of days as the infants in the active locomotion group. Thus, infants of both groups were provided with a comparable visual input while they passed the movement track. Results showed a significant improvement regarding the visual prediction ability only for the infants who participated in the passive training condition (t(8) = -3.098, p = .015, d = -1.033; Bonferroni corrected). They showed a higher prediction rate at the post-training prediction test compared to the pre-training prediction test (Mpretest = 15.59%, SEMpretest = 4.01%; Mposttest= 29.37%, SEMposttest = 5.75%). Neither the active trained (Mpretest= 21.31%, SEMpretest = 3.98%; Mposttest= 16.24%, SEMposttest = 2.98%) nor the non-trained infants (Mpretest= 15.86%, SEMpretest = 5.22%; Mposttest= 16.91%, SEMposttest = 4.02%) showed such an improvement after the 3 weeks. Furthermore, only infants in the passive training group showed a greater difference between the prediction rate of the familiarization and test phase at the post-training test compared to the differences at the pre-training test. Thus, our results suggest that infants’ encoding of the visual input gathered during locomotion is a crucial factor of the relation between infants’ crawling ability and their ability to predict the location of an object.

Authors

• Gloria Gehb, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
  Presenting Author

• Bianca Jovanovic, University of Giessen
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Kelch, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gudrun Schwarzer, University of Giessen
  Non-Presenting Author