DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE AN ADVANCED TEXTBOOK FIFTH EDITION Edited by Marc H. Bornstein National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Michael E. Lamb Cambridge University TEA asnescernisaunt associa, ronisieRs5 PHYSICAL AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT Karen E. Adolph ‘New York University Sarah B. Berger ‘The College of Staten Island, The City University of New York INTRODUCTION Why Movements? ‘When parents brag about their infants’ accomplishments to friends and family or document ‘important events with camcorders and baby books for posterity, they tend to focus on infants" physical and motor development. Parents view infants’ growth and motor skills as important milestones, because getting bigger and stronger and rolling over, sitting up, and the like are ‘dramatic, easily observable signs that children are developing normally. Psychologists, like parents, have a long tradition of using infants’ physical and motor development as a yardstick for verifying that infants are developing on schedule But why include a chapter about physical and motor development in a book about devel- ‘opmental science? What is psychological about the body in motion? The answer is \wofold. First, motor development is more than a list of developmental norms on a growth chart or a screening inventory. Motor behavior is integral to psychology. For those psychologists who believe that psychology is the study of behavior, movement is the stuff of the science. Be- havior és movement. Infants’ visual exploration of events, smiles and babbles to caregivers, manipulation of objects, and navigation of the environment involve movements of the eyes, ‘mouth, arms, and legs. Alternatively for those psychologists who believe that psychology is the study of mind, infants’ movements are the medium for making inferences about thoughts, perceptions, and intentions that are not directly observable. Researchers rely on movements to study infants who cannot understand verbal questions or respond with spoken answers. Eye ‘movernents, smiles and cries, reaching, kicking, and walking are essential tools for studying infants’ perception, cognition, emotion, and social interaction. Second, and perhaps more important, adaptive control of movement is a psychological problem in itself (Bertenthal & Clifton, 1998). Motor action is inextricably coupled with perception, and motor development is implicated in the development of cognition and emo- tion. Burgeoning motor skills provide infants with new opportunities for learning, As Piaget (1954) pointed out, sensorimotor behavior is the fodder for cognition. Cognitive problem- solving skills enable infants to plan and select motor strategies more adaptively. Every move- ment gives rise to perceptual information, and perception in tum guides action adaptively 223224 ADOLPH AND BERGER . J. Gibson, 1979; von Hofsten, 1993). Perceptual information allows infants to modify movements in accordance with their growing bodies, changing skill level, and expanding ‘environments (E. J. Gibson, 1988). Perception provides infants the means to exploit new affordances for action. Moreover, infants’ developing bodies and motor competencies are linked with changes in emotional and social development (Campos et al., 2000). Every parent knows that social pressures help to spur new skills and that infants delight in their own motor achievements Chapter Overview ‘This chapter focuses on the development of motor action in the fetal and infancy periods for several reasons. First, during these early periods the foundation for skilled action is laid down, Second, important motor milestones appear more frequently during the frst 2 years of life than ‘during any other developmental period. Third, most of the psychological research literature focuses on the infancy period. Finally, the study of fetal growth and motility is an exciting new research frontier, the study of which has been recently made possible due to technological and procedural innovations. ‘This chapter is loosely organized chronologically. We begin by detailing babies’ very first movements—spontaneous fetal movements and motor responses to external stimuli that reach the fetus in the womb. Fetal movements are essential for normal body growth, and fetal growth has remarkable effects on possibilities for movement. In the second sec- tion, we describe newborn infants’ rudimentary motor abilities. Although newboms’ move- ‘ments are hampered by gravity rather than facilitated by the buoyant uterine environment, we show how their movements are developmentally continuous with those performed inthe womb, We continue with infants’ “triumph over gravity” as they gain the muscle strength and balance control to lift their heads and sit without support, We introduce the crucial role of perceptual information in keeping balance. In subsequent sections, we describe the biomechanical and perceptual processes involved in interacting with objects—reaching, grasping, object exploration, and the use of handheld objects as tools. Elegant new studies challenge several common-sense assumptions about the development of goal-directed arm movements. ‘The section on independent mobility describes infants’ first suecess at moving their whole bodies from place to place. Although most people assume that infants first navigate the world ‘on hands and knees, in fact, infants devise a variety of unique locomotor strategies including scooting on their bottoms and shimmying on their bellies. This section also highlights speci- ficity in motor learning, Infants have to learn about each motor milestone separately. What they knew about keeping balance in an experienced sitting posture does not help them to keep balance after they begin crawling; practice with sitting and crawling does not help infants to keep balance upright. The section on upright posture describes how infants drag themselves to a stand, cruise ‘long furniture, and eventually walk. We focus on why babies walk when they do and what factors make walking skill improve. Changes in infants” body proportions and exposure torisky ‘ground surfaces impose new challenges for perceptual control of locomotion. Finally, we de- seribe complex forms of locomotion that require cognitive skill for planning and constructing ‘movement strategies to descend stairs, pedestals, and cross narrow bridges. ‘Throughout the chapter, we debunk several long-standing “myths” of motor development. Recent breakthroughs in research have provided new insights into the role of maturation versus experience, the integrity of neonatal reflexes, the universality of motor milestones, and the head-to-toe direction of growth5. PHYSICAL AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT 225 FETAL MOVEMENTS. Access to the Fetus Ofcourse, everyone knows that fetuses grow from microscopic eggs to baby-sized newborns. Most of us, however, have only a murky understanding of the remarkable changes in fetuses” shape and size over the 40 weeks of normal gestation. Part of the mystery stems from the difficulty in gaining visual access to fetal development, Like a thick black-out curtain, fetal development occurs behind the barrier of mothers’ abdominal wall. Barly researchers were restricted to educated guesswork about fetal growth and behavior because of limitations in technologies for direct observation. To describe fetal development in the first weeks of gestation, researchers examined aborted and miscarried fetuses. Under some conditions, aborted fetuses ean be kept alive in a warm bath for a few minutes after they are removed and subjected to quick and simple tests (Prechtl, 1986). Thus, the early pioneers described fetuses’ sensitivity and responsiveness to stimulation by observing them after a pin prick ora gentle swipe witha stiff hair along a specified body part. For example, Hooker (1952) elicited motor responses such as neck flexion and arm movement in response to light stroking around the mouth in 8- to 9-week-old fetuses. However, the knowledge gained from such ‘methods is potentially unreliable because miscarried fetuses may not have been developing normally, aborted fetuses may be damaged by the procedure, and fetuses were asphyxiating ‘once they were removed from the placenta (Munn, 1965). ‘The pioneers in research on fetal development had limited knowledge about the later weeks ‘of gestation because they had to rely on observing infants born prematurely and on inferring fetuses’ growth and behaviors from palpating mothers’ abdomens and documenting mothers” reports of fetal movement. Unfortunately, preterm infants may be misrepresentative of normal healthy development. Moreover, researchers had to cope with the interpretative problems involved in palpation through the abdominal wall and in parsing mothers’ reports. ‘The advent of ultrasound in the 1950s opened a new frontier of fetal research (see Prechil, 1985, for historical review). With ultrasound, high-frequency sound waves are bounced off the fetus to create a live action black-and-white video image (sonogram). A gelled wand rubbed over mothers’ abdomens or inserted intravaginally delivers the auditory signal. The returning ‘echoes produce an image that appears on a monitor at the bedside. Modern three-