Williams Joshua L, Corbetta Daniela
Department of Psychology, Armstrong State University Savannah, GA, USA.
Department of Psychology, The University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN, USA.
Front Psychol. 2016 Apr 27;7:587. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00587. eCollection 2016.
Prior research on infant reaching has shown that providing infants with repeated opportunities to reach for objects aids the emergence and progression of reaching behavior. This study investigated the effect of movement consequences on the process of learning to reach in pre-reaching infants. Thirty-five infants aged 2.9 months at the onset of the study were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups. Two groups received a 14-day intervention to distinct reaching tasks: (1) in a contingent group, a toy target moved and sounded upon contact only, and (2) in a continuous group, the toy moved and sounded continuously, independent of hand-toy contact. A third control group did not receive any intervention; this group's performance was assessed only on 2 days at a 15-day interval. Results revealed that infants in the contingent group made the most progress over time compared to the two other groups. Infants in this group made significantly more overall contacts with the sounding/moving toy, and they increased their rate of visually attended target contacts relative to non-visually attended target contacts compared to the continuous and control groups. Infants in the continuous group did not differ from the control group on the number of hand-toy contacts nor did they show a change in visually attended target versus non-visually attended target contacts ratio over time. However, they did show an increase in movement speed, presumably in an attempt to attain the moving toy. These findings highlight the importance of contingent movement consequences as a critical reinforcer for the selection of action and motor learning in early development. Through repeated opportunities to explore movement consequences, infants discover and select movements that are most successful to the task-at-hand. This study further demonstrates that distinct sensory-motor experiences can have a significant impact on developmental trajectories and can influence the skills young infants will discover through their interactions with their surroundings.
先前关于婴儿伸手够物的研究表明，为婴儿提供反复伸手够物的机会有助于伸手够物行为的出现和发展。本研究调查了动作结果对预伸手够物阶段婴儿学习伸手够物过程的影响。研究开始时，35名年龄为2.9个月的婴儿被随机分为3组中的1组。两组接受了为期14天的不同伸手够物任务干预：（1）在偶然组中，玩具目标仅在接触时移动并发出声音；（2）在连续组中，玩具持续移动并发出声音，与手和玩具的接触无关。第三组为对照组，未接受任何干预；该组仅在15天的间隔内的两天进行了表现评估。结果显示，与其他两组相比，偶然组的婴儿随着时间的推移进步最大。该组婴儿与发出声音/移动的玩具的总体接触明显更多，并且与连续组和对照组相比，他们增加了视觉关注的目标接触率相对于非视觉关注的目标接触率。连续组的婴儿在手部与玩具的接触次数上与对照组没有差异，并且随着时间的推移，他们在视觉关注的目标与非视觉关注的目标接触比例上也没有变化。然而，他们确实表现出运动速度的增加，大概是为了试图拿到移动的玩具。这些发现突出了偶然动作结果作为早期发展中动作选择和运动学习的关键强化因素的重要性。通过反复探索动作结果的机会，婴儿发现并选择最适合手头任务的动作。本研究进一步表明，不同的感觉运动体验会对发育轨迹产生重大影响，并会影响幼儿通过与周围环境互动而发现的技能。
