Infants' Reactions to Visual Movement of the Environment

Abstract

It has been demonstrated many times that the posture of infants is affected by movement of the visual environment. However, in previous studies, measurements taken with infants less than 10 to 12 months of age have always been recorded with the infants in a sitting position. An experiment is reported in which the postural reactions to a sinusoidal movement of the visual environment were recorded in infants 7 months of age and older standing with support. Fifty subjects divided into five groups (mean age 7.15 to 48.6 months) participated in the experiment. The groups differed in age and motor ability. Movement of the visual environment was achieved by means of a floorless room that could be moved sinusoidally in the anteroposterior axis. The subjects had to stand holding a horizontal bar fixed to a force-measurement platform. For each subject, measurements were made during four 60 s intervals: two with movement of the room and two with the room stationary. For all groups, reactions in the anteroposterior axis were stronger than in the lateral axis and this was true for both stimulus conditions. Comparison of the differences between the movement and stationary conditions in the anteroposterior axis, as a function of age, shows that the youngest infants seemed paradoxically to give stronger reactions when the room was stationary than when it was moving; the inverse was true for older infants and this difference increased with age. An analysis of the data with fast Fourier transforms reveals that the majority of subjects showed a pattern of postural reactions where the dominant (peak) frequency was identical to the peak frequency of room movement. The results of the present experiment lead to the conclusion that young infants react posturally to movements of their visual environment as soon as they are able to stand without help. Also, the best synchronization is found in infants that have just learned to stand without help. These results confirm that ‘visual proprioception’ assumes a leading role in the learning of a new stance.