Locomotor experience affects self and emotion.
Two studies investigated the role of locomotor experience on visual proprioception in 8-month-old infants. Visual proprioception refers to the sense of self-motion induced in a static person by patterns of optic flow. A moving room apparatus permitted displacement of an entire enclosure (except for the floor) or the side walls and ceiling. In Study 1, creeping infants and prelocomotor/walker infants showed significantly greater postural compensation and emotional responses to side wall movement than did same-age prelocomotor infants. Study 2 used true random assignment of prelocomotor infants to locomotor-training (via a powered-mobility device) and no-training conditions. Experimental infants showed powerful effects of locomotor training. These results imply that locomotor experience is playing a causal role in the ontogeny of visual proprioception.
Uchiyama
Ichiro
I
Psychology Department, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan.
Anderson
David I
DI
Campos
Joseph J
JJ
Witherington
David
D
Frankel
Carl B
CB
Lejeune
Laure
L
Barbu-Roth
Marianne
M
D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior; D007699:Kinesthesis; D008124:Locomotion; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D011187:Posture; D011434:Proprioception; D002666:Psychology, Child; D014796:Visual Perception
Infancy. 2000 Apr;1(2):149-219
32680291
Child Dev. 2004 Mar-Apr;75(2):377-94
15056194
Psychol Rev. 1946 Sep;53(5):259-76
20285975
Am J Psychol. 1987 Fall-Winter;100(3-4):510-37
3322055
Psychol Sci. 2007 Jul;18(7):593-9
17614867
Child Dev. 2009 Jan-Feb;80(1):8-14
19236388