Coordination of vision and prehension in young infants.

Infants aged 3, 5, and 7 months were shown solid objects and comparable intangible images of objects both within and beyond possible arm's reach. The infant's emotional reactions and reaching behavior in the presence of the image stimuli were very similar to their responses to the solid objects. The results do not support the reports of previous studies using a similar tactual-visual conflict situation that young infants become emotionally distressed when presented with discordant visual and tactual information. It was concluded that the initation of reaching attempts by young infants is predominantly visually controlled and any tactual-kinesthetic feedback from prehension seems to produce very little modification of young infants' reaching behavior.