Department of Psychological Science.
Biomechanics and Movement Science Program.
Dev Psychol. 2022 Feb;58(2):222-235. doi: 10.1037/dev0001289. Epub 2022 Jan 6.
Early exploratory behaviors have been proposed to facilitate children's learning, impacting motor, cognitive, language, and social development. This study related the performance of behaviors used to explore oneself to behaviors used to explore objects, and then related both types of exploratory behaviors to motor, language, and cognitive measures longitudinally from 3 through 24 months of age via secondary analysis of an existing dataset. Participants were 52 children (23 full-term, 29 preterm). Previously published results from this dataset documented delays for preterm relative to full-term infants in each assessment. The current results related performance among the assessments throughout the first 2 years of life. They showed that the developmental trajectories of behaviors children used for self-exploration closely related to the trajectories of behaviors they employed to explore objects. The trajectories of both self and object exploration behaviors significantly related to trajectories of children's motor, language, and cognitive development. Specifically, significant relations to global development were observed for self-exploratory head lifting, midline head and hand positioning, hand opening, and behavioral variability, as well as for object-oriented bimanual holding, mouthing, looking, banging, manipulating, transferring of objects, and behavioral intensity and variability. These results demonstrate continuity among the early exploratory behaviors infants perform with their bodies alone, exploratory behaviors with portable objects, and global development. The findings identify specific self- and object-exploration behaviors that may serve as early indicators of developmental delay and could be targeted by interventions to advance motor, language, and cognitive outcomes for infants at risk for delay. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
早期探索行为被认为有助于儿童学习，从而影响运动、认知、语言和社会发展。本研究将用于自我探索的行为表现与用于探索物体的行为表现联系起来，然后从 3 个月到 24 个月的纵向角度，通过对现有数据集的二次分析，将这两种类型的探索行为与运动、语言和认知测量联系起来。参与者为 52 名儿童（23 名足月，29 名早产）。来自该数据集的先前发表结果记录了早产儿在每项评估中的延迟。目前的结果涉及儿童在生命的前 2 年中各个评估之间的表现。结果表明，儿童用于自我探索的行为的发展轨迹与他们用于探索物体的行为轨迹密切相关。自我和物体探索行为的轨迹与儿童运动、语言和认知发展的轨迹显著相关。具体来说，观察到自我探索性抬头、中线头部和手部定位、手部张开和行为变异性，以及面向物体的双手握持、咀嚼、看、敲击、操作、物体转移以及行为强度和变异性与整体发展有显著关系。这些结果表明，婴儿用身体单独进行的早期探索行为、与可移动物体相关的探索行为以及整体发展之间存在连续性。这些发现确定了特定的自我和物体探索行为，它们可能成为发育迟缓的早期指标，并且可以通过干预措施来针对有发育迟缓风险的婴儿的运动、语言和认知结果进行干预。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2022 APA，保留所有权利）。
