Enhancing prehension in infants and children: fostering neuromotor strategies.
Learning to reach for and manipulate objects requires considerable neuromotor control and flexibility. Through environmental and object exploration individual neuromotor strategies expand, and prehensile skills improve, as infants and children overcome constraints. Infants and children with prehensile deficits often have difficulty exploring objects and the environment, thus, may not sufficiently develop the strategies needed to expand their prehensile skills. This article reviews neuromotor factors that influence prehension development, discusses limitations to prehensile function and provides guidelines that can be used to examine and enhance prehensile behaviors in infants and young children based on a task-oriented approach addressing impairments, motor strategies and function.
Clinical Research Department, Shriners Hospitals for Children, 3551 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19140, USA. SDUFF@shrinenet.org
Susan V
SV
Duff
Jeanne
J
Charles
D000222:Adaptation, Physiological; D002547:Cerebral Palsy / Q000503:physiopathology; D002648:Child; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000150:complications; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000150:complications / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004780:Environment, Controlled; D006225:Hand / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007859:Learning Disabilities / Q000150:complications; D009140:Musculoskeletal Diseases / Q000150:complications; D014786:Vision Disorders / Q000150:complications