Manual exploratory behaviors in six-month-old infants at environmental and biological risk.

BACKGROUND

Exploratory behaviors are essential and may improve different skill development. Different risk factors may negatively impact neuromotor development, such as biological risk and environmental risk.

OBJECTIVE

Assess and discriminate exploratory behaviors of infants at environmental or biological risk and infants at non-risk.

METHODS

Sixty-four six-month-old infants were divided into three independent groups: Group 1 (G1), 28 healthy full-term infants; Group 2 (G2), 21 full-term infants of low socioeconomic status (SES); Group 3 (G3), 15 very preterm infants. Nine exploratory behaviors were assessed: fingering, mouthing, waving, tapping, banging, transferring, rotating, alternating, and squeezing.

RESULTS

For the malleable object, fingering (p = 0.005) and transferring (p = 0.046) behaviors were different between G2 and G3 whereas waving behavior (p = 0.041) differed between G1 and G3 and transferring (p = 0.003) between G1 and G2. For the rigid object, waving was different between G1 and G3 (p = 0.018) whereas transferring behavior differed between G2 and G3 (p = 0.019). Total number of behaviors was significantly different between G1 and G2 for malleable (p = 0.019) and rigid objects (p = 0.009). Intragroup analysis revealed differences between malleable and rigid objects for transferring (p = 0.013), squeezing (p < 0.0001), fingering (p < 0.0001), and banging (p = 0.013) behaviors in infants from G1. Fingering and squeezing (p < 0.0001) were different between malleable and rigid objects in G2 (p = 0.009 and p < 0.0001) and G3 (p = 0.004 and p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSION

Risk factors and object properties influence exploratory behaviors, mainly in low SES infants. Fingering and banging behaviors are favored by rigid objects, while squeezing is favored by malleable objects.