Amy Needham

A pick-me-up for infants’ exploratory skills: Early simulated experiences reaching for objects using ‘sticky mittens’ enhances young infants’ object exploration skills

Infants’ early object contact was enriched by giving a group of pre-reaching infants experience with prehension earlier than they would normally acquire it. These infants received 10–14 10-min play sessions wearing “sticky mittens”: mittens with palms that stuck to the edges of toys and allowed the infants to pick up the toys. After these enrichment sessions, the experienced infants’ object engagement and object exploration skills were compared to those of infants who were the same age as the experienced infants but had not received the play sessions. The results showed that the experienced infants showed more object engagement via a number of measures, and showed more sophisticated object exploration strategies compared to their inexperienced peers. The results suggest that the early simulated experience reaching for objects serves to jump-start the process of object engagement in young infants.

Intuitions about support in 4.5-month-old infants ☆

The present experiment examined whether 4.5-month-old infants expect an object to fall when its support is removed. The infants saw two test events: a possible and an impossible event. In the possible event, a hand deposited a box fully on a platform and then withdrew, leaving the box supported by the platform. In the impossible event, the hand deposited the box beyond the platform and then withdrew, leaving the box suspended in mid-air with no apparent source of support. The infants looked reliably longer at the impossible than at the possible event, suggesting that they expected the box to fall in the impossible event and were surprised that it did not. Evidence for this interpretation was provided by the results of two control conditions. In one, the box fell when released by the hand beyond the platform. In the other, the hand retained its grasp on the box throughout the events, thereby providing continuous support for it. The infants in these two conditions tended to look equally at the test events. Together, these results indicate that, like adults, 4.5-month-old infants realize that objects cannot remain stable without support.

Effects of prior experience on 4.5-month-old infants' object segregation

Adults bring to bear at least three types of object knowledge-configural, experiential, and physical knowledge-when segregating displays. Prior research suggests that young infants lack configural knowledge: they do not expect similar surfaces to belong to the same units and dissimilar surfaces to distinct units. The present research asked whether young infants could make use of another type of object knowledge, experiential knowledge, when organizing displays. In the first experiment, 4.5month-old infants were familiarized with a stationary display composed of a yellow cylinder lying next to a tall, blue box. In the test events, a gloved hand grasped the cylinder and pulled it a short distance to the side; the box either moved with the cylinder (move-together condition) or remained stationary (move-apart condition). The infants tended to look equally at the move-apart and the movetogether events, as though they were uncertain whether the cylinder and box constituted one or two units. Subsequent experiments examined whether infants would respond differently to the cylinderand-box display if they were briefly exposed to the box alone (Experiment 2), or to the cylinder alone (Experiments 3 and 4), prior to seeing the test events. The results indicated that the infants’ responses to the cylinder-and-box display were affected by these prior experiences: after seeing the box alone for 5 s, or the cylinder alone for 15 s, the infants looked reliably longer at the move-together than at the move-apart event, suggesting that they now viewed the cylinder and box as separate units and hence were surprised in the move-together event when they moved as one. In a final experiment (Experiment 5), infants were found to be able to use a prior experience with the box to parse the cylinder-and-box display even if this experience took place in a different setting (the infants’ homes) and as long as 24 hours before the infants were shown the test events in the laboratory. Together, the present findings provide strong evidence that 4.5-month-old infants, like adults, use their experiential knowledge when segregating displays.

The role of shape in 4-month-old infants’ object segregation

This research examined four-month-old infants’ use of featural information (shape or color and pattern) to segregate a display into two adjacent pieces. The infants were shown displays consisting of two objects that were the same or different in shape and that were decorated with either similar or different surface markings such that featural information could suggest that the two portions were either connected or not. Three displays were created that allowed the comparison of infants’ use of shape information and color and pattern information. The results suggest that, at four months of age, infants are more likely to use shape differences than color and pattern differences to find object boundaries. The results are discussed in the context of infants’ learning about the utility of different sources of information for predicting object boundary locations.

Infants' Integration of Information from Different Sources in Object Segregation

The present research investigated 9.5-month-old infants’ use of spatial and featural information when determining the locations of object boundaries. Infants were shown displays for which spatial information (the relative positions of the boxes) and featural information (the colours and patterns of the boxes) led to either the same or different interpretations of the display. Infants’ interpretations of the displays were assessed by measuring their looking time at an event in which a screen passed either between or behind the objects. The results indicated that when the spatial information provided a clear interpretation of the display, infants used this interpretation even when featural information conflicted. In contrast, featural information was only used to interpret the display when spatial information did not allow a clear interpretation (1997a). These results are similar to those of Needham and Baillargeon in their indication that infants use multiple sources of information to segregate displays and that their strategies for determining which information to use are sensitive to characteristics of each source of information such as its

Objective spatial coding by 6.5-month-old infants in a visual dishabituation task

Forty 6.5-month-old infants were tested in a visual dishabituation variation of Bremner and Bryant’s reaching task used to evaluate the spatial representations of infants. In the visual dishabituation version of this task, infants were habituated to a display in which an object held a constant position at a corner of the table. Following habituation, the object was either moved to the opposite table-corner or nothing on the table was changed. Also, the infant either remained in her starting position or she moved to the opposite side of the table. The results show that, following habituation to an object, infants dishabituated to a change in the actual location of an object and not to a change in the egocentric relationship between the infant and the object. We conclude that even in a landmark-free environment (1) 6.5-month-old infants are capable of representing space allocentrically, and (2) they have the ability to update their location during passive movement.

Effects of balance relations between objects on infant’s object segregation

Young infants are sensitive to support relations between objects. However, the types of contact perceived to be sufficient for object support change over development. At 4.5 months of age, infants expect an object to be adequately supported when in contact with another object. By 6.5 months, this simple contact/no-contact distinction is refined to account for proportion of contact: an object is perceived to be supported when 70% of its bottom surface is in contact with another object, but it is not perceived to be supported when 15% is contacted. Here, we employ an object segregation paradigm to investigate whether 8-month-old infants’ judgments of support relations are mediated by assessments both of the proportion of contact and of the position of contact. Infants in the current experiments viewed test displays consisting of two objects, a long thin object (a box) and a smaller roughly cubic object (a box in Experiment 1, a cylinder in Experiments 2 and 3). Two basic positions of contact were used, such that either the centers or the lateral edges of the two objects were aligned. The proportion of contact was manipulated across experiments by having the smaller object support the larger or the larger object support the smaller. There was a significant effect of position of contact when only a small proportion of the upper object was contacted by the lower object. However, position of contact was found not to matter when all of the upper object was in contact with the lower object. We conclude that 8-month-old infants’ judgments of support relations are influenced by both proportion and position of supporting contact. We integrate the findings from the current experiments into the general developmental framework proposed by Baillargeon and colleagues.

Face Preference in Infancy and Its Relation to Motor Activity.

Infants’ preference for faces was investigated in a cross-sectional sample of 75 children, aged 3 to 11 months, and 23 adults. A visual preference paradigm was used where pairs of faces and toys were presented side-by-side while eye gaze was recorded. In addition, motor activity was assessed via parent report and the relation between motor activity and face preference was examined. Face preference scores followed an inverted U-shaped developmental trajectory with no face preference in 3-month-olds, a strong face preference in 5- and 9-month-olds, and a weaker face preference in 11-month-olds. Adults showed no reliable face preference. Motor activity was a significant predictor of face preference in 3-month-old infants, supporting the presence of motor-social connections in early infancy.

How infants grasp two adjacent objects: effects of perceived display composition on infants’ actions

In this research, 12.5- and 9.5-month-old infants’ use of information about the composition of a display to guide their actions on the display was examined. The display was composed of two pieces that were either glued together (the oneobject display) or not (the two-object display). At the beginning of the session, the composition of the display was revealed to the infant and then the display was placed on the table within the infant’s reach. When resting on the table, these two versions of the display were indistinguishable. The results showed that the 12.5-month-old infants reached with one hand after they had experience with the display as a single object, and with two hands if they had experience with the display as two separate objects. The 12.5-month-old infants also placed their grasps differently depending upon the experienced composition: infants who experienced a single object tended to distribute their reaches evenly along the display, whereas infants who experienced two separate objects placed their reaches toward the outer ends of the display, avoiding the boundary between the two pieces. In contrast, the 9.5-month-old infants reached with one hand for both the one-object and the two-object displays, and their reaches did not show a difference in the distribution pattern that could be traced back to the infants’ prior experience with the composition of the display they were grasping.

Early childhood constraint therapy for sensory/motor impairment in cerebral palsy: a randomised clinical trial protocol

Introduction Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common physical disability in childhood. It is a disorder resulting from sensory and motor impairments due to perinatal brain injury, with lifetime consequences that range from poor adaptive and social function to communication and emotional disturbances. Infants with CP have a fundamental disadvantage in recovering motor function: they do not receive accurate sensory feedback from their movements, leading to developmental disregard. Constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) is one of the few effective neurorehabilitative strategies shown to improve upper extremity motor function in adults and older children with CP, potentially overcoming developmental disregard. Methods and analysis This study is a randomised controlled trial of children 12–24 months corrected age studying the effectiveness of CIMT combined with motor and sensory-motor interventions. The study population will comprise 72 children with CP and 144 typically developing children for a total of N=216 children. All children with CP, regardless of group allocation will continue with their standard of care occupational and physical therapy throughout the study. The research material collected will be in the form of data from high-density array event-related potential scan, standardised assessment scores and motion analysis scores. Ethics and dissemination The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board. The findings of the trial will be disseminated through peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Trial registration number NCT02567630.