Journal of Experimental Psychology: Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

Human Perception and Performance 0096-1523/96/$3.00

1996, Vol. 22, No. 2, 502-522

The Developmental Origins of Bimanual Coordination:

A Dynamic Perspective
Daniela Corbetta and Esther Thelen
Indiana University

Patterns of interlimb coordination associated with infant reaching fluctuate frequently over
developmental time. This study investigated whether these fluctuations are related to coor-
dination tendencies. Interlimb patterns were studied in reaching and nonreaching movements
in 4 infants, which were followed through their 1st year. Each week, reaching and nonreach-
ing endpoint kinematics were recorded in both arms during multiple 14-s trials. It was found
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that patterns of interlimb coordination in reaching matched coordination tendencies in

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nonreaching. Reaching fluctuated between uni- and bimanual periods. During the bimanual
periods, nonreaching interlimb activity tended to be synchronous. During the unimanual
periods, nonreaching activity revealed no predominant form of interlimb coordination. It is
argued that changing coordination tendencies may influence the organization of specific
goal-oriented behaviors from early in life.

Everyone performs two-handed tasks routinely hundreds
of times a day. Most people catch a ball, clap, steer a car,
open a can, cut with scissors, and fold a letter skillfully and
without effort. Some of these tasks, like catching a large
ball, require moving both arms similarly. Others, like fold-
ing a letter, demand different movements of each hand. But
in both cases, adults flexibly adapt and coordinate the move-
ments of their arms to accomplish various tasks under
different conditions.
In contrast, infants and young children find many of these
seemingly simple tasks, such as catching a ball, or folding a
letter, difficult, or even impossible. Clearly, the ability to
adapt interlimb coordination to everyday situations devel-
ops progressively throughout the life span as each new task
challenge is met with new patterns of action, and as new
skills, in turn, open up new task environments.
The foundations of later bimanual skills, however, are
Daniela Corbetta and Esther Thelen, Department of Psychology,
Indiana University.
This research was funded by Grant HD223800 from the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development by a Research
Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Men-
tal Health, and by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foun-
dation (8210-025926).
We sincerely thank the infants and their families for their en-
thusiastic commitment to this 1-year study. We are also grateful to
the people that provided major help during data collection and data
processing: Karen E. Adolph, Deanna Berkoben, Shawn Fleck,
Dexter Gormley, Charles W. Hagen, Jody L. Jensen, Kathi Kamm,
Jiirgen Konczak, Ronald S. Neal, Michael Schoeny, John P. Spen-
cer, and Gregory A. Smith. We thank Philippe Rochat, Paul J.
Treffner, and Eugene C. Goldfield for their helpful comments in
reviewing this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Daniela Corbetta, who is now at Department of Health, Kinesiol-
ogy, and Leisure Studies, Purdue University, 1362 Lambert, West
Lafayette, Indiana 47907-1362. Electronic mail may be sent via
Internet to corbetta@sage.cc.purdue.edu.
502
built during the first year, when infants learn to reach, grasp,
and manipulate objects. Indeed, at the time of reaching
onset at 3 to 4 months of age, infants begin to exhibit two
basic forms of goal-oriented interlimb coordination: reach-
ing with one arm or reaching with two arms. For adults, the
decision to reach with one hand or two is finely scaled to the
size of the object: two hands for a beach ball and one hand
for a tennis ball (Newell, Scully, Tenenbaum, & Hardiman,
1989). Infants, on the other hand, do not show a consistent
object-scaled distinction in interlimb coordination until the
beginning of the second year (Fagard & Jacquet, 1993).
Younger infants frequently reach for small objects with two
hands, as if they were insensitive to object size (Fagard &
Jacquet, 1993; Flament, 1974, 1975; Thelen et al., 1993;
von Hofsten, 1979, 1991; White, Castle, & Held, 1964). For
example, White et al. (1964) described infants' initial reach-
ing attempts as bilateral and symmetrical. Flament (1974,
1975) reported very similar observations. She found that
early reaches for small objects were often performed with a
bilateral arm extension toward the object, even if the object
was then only unimanually grasped.
Even as infants' reaching skills improve over the first
year, their bimanual patterns appear to fluctuate and to be
poorly adapted to task demands (Ames, 1949; Flament,
1974, 1975; Gesell & Ames, 1947; Ramsay, 1985). For
instance, older infants sometimes return to bimanual reach-
ing patterns, even though they have reached for small ob-
jects with one arm for several weeks or months before.
Gesell and Ames (1947) addressed this fluctuation first,
describing the development of reaching as a continuous and
repeated alternation between periods of bilateral responses
and periods of unilateral responses. They also found that
these developmental fluctuations, which Gesell (1939,
1946) called "reciprocal interweaving," did not follow a
universal and age-related course, but were individually de-
termined. More recently, in their systematic observations of
interlimb coupling, Goldfield and Michel (1986a, 1986b)
 DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF BIMANUAL COORDINATION
also discovered significant coordination shifts, with stron-
ger bimanual coupling at 7 months than at 8, 10, and 11
months.
It remains an important developmental question as to why
infants sometimes do and sometimes do not use task-appro-
priate patterns of interlimb coordination and why these
preferences shift back and forth. One possibility is that
infants do not understand object properties, that is, whether
the object is big or small. But this does not seem to be the
case. For example, Bruner and Koslowski (1972) found that
by 3 months, infants were already able to perceive and
discriminate size properties in objects and to decide, on the
basis of size perception, whether objects were reachable or
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not. They observed that infants extended their arms in an
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attempt to reach when objects were small and therefore
graspable but did not extend their arms when objects were
large.
Another possibility is that infants understand object prop-
erties but cannot adapt their manual behavior accordingly.
Some adaptation, however, is possible; infants can make
some types of object-related adjustments early. For exam-
ple, when infants begin to reach successfully, they are able
to adapt their hand grip configuration to the size of the
object by using either tactile information (Newell, Scully,
McDonald, & Baillargeon, 1989) or acoustic cues (Clifton,
Rochat, Litovsky, & Ferris, 1991). Similarly, 41/2-month-old
infants can roughly shape their hands in anticipation of
horizontal or vertical rods (von Hofsten & Fazel-Zandy,
1984), and anticipatory hand shaping is clearly developed
by 9 months (Lockman, Ashmead, & Bushnell, 1984;
Pi6raut-Le Bonniec, 1985). What is surprising, however, is
that this increasing ability to integrate perceptual informa-
tion of objects' physical properties into the grip or reaching
pattern does not seem to apply to patterns of coordination
between the limbs. Many infants continue to extend two
arms for reaching small objects until late in the first year or
actually revert to a bimanual pattern after a period of uni-
manual hand use (see Corbetta & Mounoud, 1990, for a
review).
A third possibility, and the one that we explore here, is
that the bilateral coordination patterns seen in early reaching
are influenced not only by the objects to be grasped but also
by the general and pervasive coordination tendencies of the
infant. Recall that we earlier depicted adults as flexible and
adaptive in their bimanual coordination. Although this is
true, it is also true that there are limits to this flexibility.
That is, even in skilled adults, certain patterns of coordina-
tion—like rubbing your stomach with one hand and patting
your head with another or tapping complex polyrhythms—
are very difficult to perform. It is as though the system
wants to stay synchronized despite the intentions of the
performer.
These persistent coordination tendencies in adults have
been the subject of intense study over the last decade, and,
in the present study, we situate the puzzles of infant coor-
dination within the broader framework of the adult work. In
particular, we conducted the present investigation from the
perspectives of the dynamic pattern (Jeka & Kelso, 1989;
Kelso, Ding, & Schoner, 1993; Schoner & Kelso, 1988) and
503
natural systems approaches (Kugler & Turvey, 1987) to
movement coordination and control. According to these
views, movement patterns emerge from both the coopera-
tive coupling of the ensemble of components that constitute
the behavior itself (i.e., the collective activity of the neural,
muscular, skeletal, and vascular components of the body
segments involved in the movement), and the interaction of
this natural cooperative coupling with specific environmen-
tal constraints (Newell, 1986). Recent advances on inter-
limb coordination have demonstrated that in adults, forms
of spontaneous cooperative coupling between limbs are
governed by well-defined dynamics of coordination, also
called intrinsic dynamics or coordination tendencies
(Schoner, Zanone, & Kelso, 1992; Zanone & Kelso, 1992).
These coordination tendencies express the preference of an
organism to spontaneously adopt specific forms of pattern-
ing rather than others because these forms are more stable,
more efficient, or more comfortable for the system (Kugler
& Turvey, 1987).
In the now-classic example of such coordination dynam-
ics (Kelso, 1984; Kelso & Schoner, 1988), individuals were
asked to perform repeated in-phase or anti-phase flexions
and extensions of the index fingers of the two hands while
increasing movement frequency. As movement speed in-
creased, individuals stably maintained the symmetrical in-
phase pattern, which corresponded to a natural spontaneous
form of coordination. In contrast, the asymmetrical anti-
phase pattern, which was stably performed at slow speeds,
became unstable and difficult to maintain at higher speeds
because the spontaneous tendency to produce symmetrical
patterns overcame the desired goal. Thus, even if an indi-
vidual's intention was to perform anti-phase patterns, this
intention could only be instantiated within a certain defined
range of movement speed.
Scholz, Kelso, and Schoner (1988) provided an even
more explicit demonstration of the influence of coordination
tendencies on intentional movement. Using the same two-
finger coordination paradigm, Scholz et al. asked adults to
shift intentionally from the in- to the anti-phase coordina-
tion pattern or from the anti- to the in-phase one following
an external signal. They discovered that shifting from one
pattern to the other was easier when going from the less
stable (anti-phase) to the more stable (in-phase) pattern than
when going from the more stable to the less stable pattern.
Thus, again, the intention to modify a desired pattern of
coordination may be affected by the stability or, say, more
spontaneous coordination characteristics of the performed
pattern.
Finally, previously existing coordination tendencies may
shape the course of learning new patterns of coordination. In
a recent study, Zanone and Kelso (1992) instructed individ-
uals to produce interlimb movements of flexion-extension
of the fingers at a 90° out-of-phase pattern, which is usually
not spontaneously produced and thus tends to be unstable.
First, Zanone and Kelso found that the individuals needed to
practice for many days to overcome their initial natural
tendencies to produce in- or anti-phase movements. Second,
even after practice, the ability to learn the 90° phase pattern
varied greatly between individuals, and some individuals
 504 CORBETTA AND THELEN
never learned the task. However, Zanone and Kelso also
found that among those who did learn the 90° pattern, the
initially stable in- and anti-phase patterns became unstable
and were replaced by the newly learned and stable 90°
phase pattern. Thus, a fundamental contribution of this
study was to show that learning new patterns of coordina-
tion not only involved learning the new pattern but also
resulted in modifying the entire coordination dynamics of
the system.
These adult studies provide a new framework for under-
standing patterns of interlimb coordination in early reach-
ing. They have shown that underlying coordination dynam-
ics may compete with intended patterns of movement and
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may influence how new patterns are learned. Viewed in this
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light, infants' early bimanual patterns can be seen as a
product of a tension between their spontaneous coordination
tendencies and their ability to learn and perform reaching
movements that are adapted to the task. Thus, in this study
we asked whether coordination tendencies, intrinsic to the
infants' upper arm motion, were related to the emergence of
one- or two-handed patterns in reaching.
To answer this question, we departed from the design of
previous infant studies (e.g., Flament, 1975; Goldfield &
Michel, 1986a, 1986b; Michel, Ovrut, & Harkins, 1986;
Newell, Scully, McDonald, & Baillargeon, 1989), which
have looked only at reaching movements themselves, for
limited age ranges, and using cross-sectional samples,
which are ill-suited to capture the individual fluctuations of
patterns characteristic of infant manual coordination. Unlike
these previous studies, we tracked the development of
reaching in a few infants longitudinally during the whole
first year and in conjunction with the development of their
spontaneous interlimb patterning.
We introduced measures of interlimb coordination in
spontaneous movements as a means of describing patterns
with no task constraints or, at least, with unspecified or
nonspecific task constraints. In everyday life, infants move
their arms a great deal, both before they learn to reach and
later, when they are not reaching and grasping. Sometimes
these non-goal-directed movements seem bimanually coor-
dinated (Thelen et al., 1993; White et al., 1964). We asked,
then, if propensities to reach bimanually were independent
from, or related to, generalized tendencies in the motor
system to synchronize the movements of both arms. Thus,
our primary measure was a comparison of the degree of
coordination during reaching itself with the coordination
manifested in all nonreaching movements recorded during
the observations. Note again that we framed this influence
as a tension between what the baby wants to do (obtain the
toy), and what the system most comfortably performs
(reaching with one or two arms), but we recognized that this
interaction may be complex and bidirectional. That is, co-
ordination tendencies may influence the pattern of the reach,
but practice and fine tuning in reaching may, in turn, modify
coordination tendencies, as was seen in the adult experiment
(Zanone & Kelso, 1992). In addition, although we kept the
task as constant as possible throughout the year—reaching
for small, graspable objects presented at midline and shoul-
der height—the meaning of the task may have changed for
the baby. We cannot make strong inferences about whether
the infant intended to reach with one or two hands, but we
can describe the predominant behavioral tendencies and
their stability and change.
This analysis of bimanual coordination is part of a larger
study of learning to reach undertaken from the perspective
of a dynamic systems view of development (Thelen et al.,
1993; Thelen, Kelso, & Fogel, 1987; Thelen & Smith, 1994;
Thelen & Ulrich, 1991). Our guiding assumption was that
the behavioral manifestation of coordination reflects the
interaction—the soft assembly—of infants' natural coordi-
nation dynamics and the task (or lack of task) at hand within
the physical environment. The study followed a dynamic
systems strategy, as outlined by Thelen and Ulrich (1991;
Jeka & Kelso, 1989; Kelso, Ding, & Schoner, 1993;
Schoner & Kelso, 1988) by (a) defining a collective variable
that captured the coordinative behavior of the system
throughout the developmental period, (b) laying out the
dynamics of the collective variable over time, (c) identify-
ing periods of stability and change, and (d) suggesting
putative control parameters, that is, components that move
the system through the coordination dynamics. A notable
feature of this study is that we described the collective
variable dynamics over two time scales. That is, we mea-
sured the changes in coordination over the real time of the
experimental trials to capture the infants' coordination ten-
dencies as they acted, and we also tracked these dynamics
over developmental time as a landscape of change in pat-
terning (see Muchisky, Gershkoff-Stowe, Cole, & Thelen,
in press).
We used two collective measures of bimanual coordina-
tion. For the act of reaching, we simply scored whether the
infant reached with one or two hands. For nonreaching
movements, we used a running correlation technique on
movement velocities to capture continuous changes of co-
ordination. In the recent adult and infant interlimb coordi-
nation literature, the collective variable of choice has been
the relative phasing between, for example, the right and left
finger flexions and extensions (Kelso, 1984; Kelso &
Schoner, 1988; Scholz et al., 1988; Zanone & Kelso, 1992),
or between infants' legs flexion and extension in treadmill-
elicited stepping (Thelen & Ulrich, 1991). However, rela-
tive phase is not an appropriate variable for unconstrained
and unpaced infant arm movements. In this study, infants
were free to move both arms in any spatiotemporal pattern,
to move one arm only, or not to move at all. In such
situations, it is impossible to define relative phasing. There
is increasing use of autocorrelation, and cross-correlation
measures with various lags to assess coordination between
two movements or physiological time series (see for exam-
ple, Amblard, Assaiante, Lekhel, & Marchand, 1994; Swin-
nen, Young, Walter, & Semen, 1991; Walter & Swinnen,
1990). Correlations are especially adequate when no abso-
lute time origin can be fixed, as is the case in these natural
infant movements. In addition, because there are no spatial
constraints for spontaneous movements, we chose to use the
three-dimensional resultant speed of the arm endpoints to
assess degree of movement synchrony. Previous work led us
 DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF BIMANUAL COORDINATION
to believe that timing of accelerations and decelerations is
critical to early control (Thelen et al., 1993).
Method
Participants
The participants were three boys (G.S., N.Q., and J.A.) and one
girl (H.R.). All four were normal, full-term infants with no known
sensory or motor impairments. These participants were recruited
by contacting the parents several weeks before the birth of the
infant. First, a letter explained the goal of the study. Then, inter-
ested parents visited the laboratory to become acquainted with the
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full longitudinal procedure. Infants were all from White, middle-
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class families who voluntarily consented to participate in the study.
During the entire year of study they received $15 per visit. Par-
ticipants never missed a session except for one infant (N.Q.) who
was ill at 25 weeks old. Because N.Q. cried at 50 weeks old, he
also had an additional session at Week 51.
Apparatus
We sampled the time-position data of infants' upper arm move-
ments at 150 Hz with a four-camera WATSMART motion analysis
system (Northern Digital, Inc., Waterloo, Ontario, Canada).
WATSMART is an optical electronic system that tracks small
individually pulsed infrared light-emitting diodes (IREDs) at-
tached to the infant. Two pairs of cameras recorded and converted
each IRED's pulse position as two-dimensional coordinates. These
coordinates were defined by a calibrated volume (53.5 cm wide X
53.5 cm deep X 65.5 cm high) placed at the center of the four
cameras' views, which we determined before each experimental
session. We maintained the calibration measurement errors as
close as possible to 1 mm. The third dimension of the two-
dimensional position data was mathematically reconstructed a
posteriori using a direct linear transformation technique.
An armless and narrow infant chair was situated at the center of
the calibrated volume. The chair's orientation in the calibrated area
allowed each pair of cameras, located at the right and left side of
the chair, to track the IREDs of each arm separately. The chair,
which was reclined 30° from vertical, was designed to provide full
support to the infants trunks and heads but to leave both arms free
to move. During the year of data collection, we used three identical
chairs of increasing size to fit the infants' growing bodies.
In addition to the WATSMART data sampling, we simulta-
neously recorded the trials with two video cameras located on the
side and with either a frontal or overhead view. Both views were
recorded on the same image using a split-screen device. A frame
counter, appearing on the video image, tracked the video
frame numbers at 60 Hz. The WATSMART data, video image, and
frame counter were all synchronized.
Procedure
The longitudinal study consisted of two consecutive visits to our
laboratory every week from ages 3 to 30 weeks, and every other
week from ages 30 to 52 weeks. During the first visit each week,
we video recorded a naturalistic interactive play session to capture
the significant changes in infants motor milestones. During the
second session, we specifically studied infants' upper arm coordi-
nation as it evolved before, during, and after the onset of reaching.
In this article, we report only behavioral and kinematic data from
the second session.
505
To prepare infants for recording, we removed their shirts to
place IREDs on their arms. We taped IREDs on the infants' skin
at the rotational centers of the shoulder, the elbow, and the wrist
joints of each arm. We also placed a fourth IRED on the knuckle
of each hand. Then, we secured the infants in the chair, reclined
30° from vertical, with a wide strap around their torso. Both the
inclination of the chair and the wide strap around the torso pro-
vided postural stability and prevented infants from leaning forward
or sideways.
At every session, we collected 8 to 12 reaching trials, depending
on the infants' states of alertness. In particular, to reinforce their
interest in the task and maintain their level of attention, we varied
both the targets and the way we presented them to the infants
across trials. The targets were a set of eight to ten small, colorful,
attractive toys, which infants could easily grasp with one hand.
The set of toys included one yellow bell-shaped baby rattle and
one round white and orange round baby rattle (their widest sec-
tions were of 4.5 and 5.5 cm, respectively); one set of small
metallic measuring spoons, where the largest spoon measured 4.5
cm in width; four small solid balls of different colors, with diam-
eters varying between 3.0 and 4.5 cm; and several laboratory-made
objects, such as strings of colorful beads, which were knotted in a
flowered shape not wider than 4.0 cm.
We always presented the targets individually and in a random
order. In addition, these targets were always presented to the
infants at midline, at shoulder height, and at a reachable distance.
However, within each session and as infants developed, we varied
the target presentations by having changing combinations of a
parent, an experimenter, or an apparatus (moved by an experi-
menter) offer the toy. Infants' motivation to reach under different
presentation situations varied according to age. Very young infants
reached more when the toy was first introduced from the periph-
eral visual field and brought to midline with the apparatus. At 3-4
months, infants reached more when the toy was presented by the
apparatus or the experimenter. Later, parents became more effi-
cient motivators. Table 1 summarizes the different toy presenta-
tions across the first year. It represents our attempt to maintain a
consistent procedure, by counterbalancing toy presentations, while
keeping our young subjects engaged in the task.
In the data collection, infants' reaches were always embedded in
14-s trials. First, an experimenter triggered the WATSMART
system; then, a few seconds after the beginning of data collection,
the toy was presented to the infants. The infants could decide to
reach at any time within the remaining seconds after toy presen-
tation. Thus, every 14-s trial contained non-object-oriented activ-
ities, such as hand-to-mouth behaviors, waving, or flapping. When
infants were able to reach, trials also contained object-oriented
activities such as reaching or exploratory activities such as object-
to-mouth behaviors, shaking, banging, or throwing the toys. This
procedure of recording long trials of data was introduced to cap-
ture other patterns of interlimb coordination than the one involved
in the act of reaching, and to track over the year the natural
changes of these nonspecific reaching coordinative behaviors.
It is important to mention that during the earlier ages in the
apparatus conditions, infants were unable to anticipate the trajec-
tory of the target. If they visually followed the target's motion,
they usually began to reach for it only when the object reached a
stationary midline location.
Data Selection and Filtering
Infants' upper arm activities were difficult to analyze because
our procedure did not constrain the infants' spontaneous move-
ments. Sometimes, their movements obscured the IREDs from the
 506 CORBETTA AND THELEN

Table 1
Protocol of the Different Combinations of Toy Presentations Used Within Sessions Per Year and Per Participant
N.Q. G.S. H.R. :LA.
Week E P Al A2 E P Al A2 E P Al A2 E p Al A2
4 X X X X X X X X X X X X
5 X X X X X X X X X X X X
6 X X X X X X X X X X X X
7 X X X X X X X X X X X X
8 X X X X X X X X X X X X
9 X X X X X X X X X X X X
10 X X X X X X X X X X X X
11 X X X X X X X X X X X X
12 X X X X X X X X X X X X
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13 X X X X X X X X X X X X
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

14 X X X X X X X X X X X X
15 X X X X X X X X X X X X
16 X X X X X X X X X X X X
17 X X X X X X X X X X X X
18 X X X X X X X X X X X X
19 X X X X X X X X X X X X
20 X X X X X X X X X X X X
21 X X X X X X X X X X X X
22 X X X X X X X X X X X
23 X X X X X X X X X X X
24 X X X X X X X X X X X
25 X X X X X X X X X X
26 X X X X X X X X X X
27 X X X X X X X X X X
28 X X X X X X X X X X
29 X X X X X X X X X
30 X X X X X X X X
32 X X X X X X X X
34 X X X X X X X X
36 X X X X X X X X
38 X X X X X X X X
40 X X X X X X X X
42 X X X X X X X X
44 X X X X X X X X
46 X X X X X X X X
48 X X X X X X X X
50 X X X X X X X X
52 X X X X X X X X
Note. E = experimenter presents toy at midline; P = parent presents toy at midline; Al = apparatus presents toy from right to midline
or from left to midline; A2 = apparatus presents toy from overhead at midline.

cameras' views, or sometimes infants were inactive, uncoopera-
tive, or fussy. Thus, before filtering and analyzing the data, we
defined which trials and portions of trials contained usable behav-
iors and visible data.
We began the data selection process by coding every trial from
the video to determine which ones contained behaviorally inter-
esting data. We considered behaviorally interesting the trials or
portions of trials that included large spontaneous movements of the
arms and goal-oriented behaviors. Spontaneous movements could
be performed in conjunction with the reach or not and consisted
mostly of arm waving and rhythmical behaviors like flapping
(Thelen et al., 1993; Thelen et al., 1991). Object- or goal-oriented
movements included reaching, object-to-mouth behaviors, or other
exploratory behaviors, like throwing or shaking the toy. We ex-
cluded from our data set trials or segment of trials in which the
infants were passive, asleep, or crying or in which they were
pulling on the wires, looking around the chair, sucking on their
fingers, and so forth. We also eliminated all small movements of
the hands, such as fingering or hand rotations. Two coders worked
together to select the behavioral information. They coded each arm
in separate passes.
Once data were selected, our second problem was to estimate
within the behaviorally interesting segments which portion of data
was visible and thus usable and which portion was missing. We
considered the data usable when 70% of each marker was seen
across the behaviorally interesting segments and when the missing
gaps were no larger than 50 frames (which corresponds to one
third of the sampling frequency). We learned from previous pilots
that such gaps could be interpolated without modifying the original
signal. In addition, to reduce the loss of data that resulted from this
selection process, we compared the amount of usable data between
hand and wrist IREDs of the same arm. The IRED that provided
the higher visibility was chosen for the hand kinematics. If both
IREDs were identically visible, we chose the hand IRED.
We interpolated and filtered the x, y, and z coordinates of each
IRED through the full 14 s of data; however, we only stored in files
for further processing the segments of data that matched our
behavioral and visibility criteria. We began the filtering process by
using a linear spline (straight line) to interpolate the obscured data
of each IRED's coordinates. The linear spline was used because it
did not modify the actual frequency components of the original
data set. We then determined the cutoff frequency for filtering
 DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF BIMANUAL COORDINATION
from the spectral analysis of each coordinate of each IRED. Each
cutoff frequency was determined from 97% of the integral value of
the spectral density of each coordinate. This rather conservative
method allowed us to eliminate the frequencies due to noise and to
preserve as much as possible the frequencies of the actual joint
motion. Finally, using each cutoff frequency with its correspond-
ing IRED's coordinate, we smoothed the data using a fourth-order
Butterworth filter and then derivated each coordinate separately to
obtain the corresponding movement velocities.
There were three additional considerations in this process of
data selection. First, to analyze patterns of interlimb coordination
we only used segments of data containing overlapping information
from both hands at the same time. Second, at the early weeks (from
3 to 6 weeks old) sometimes we could not collect enough data to
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perform our measures, often because the babies were sleepy, upset,
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or passive. Thus, all of our kinematic analyses start from Week 5
for the 4 infants, and the number of sessions across the full year
slightly varies among infants. Third, when the infants began to
reach, we identified in our continuous kinematic files the start and
the end of each reaching movement to be able to extract the
reaching data from the continuous stream of nonreaching behavior.
For this last step, we identified the start and the end of each reach
by using a method described in a previous article (Corbetta &
Thelen, 1995). Briefly, this method used an interactive computer
program that prompted the user to choose reach initiation and
hand-toy contact on the basis of comparison of the continuous
three-dimensional hand kinematics (hand-toy distance and speed
displayed on the computer screen) with the corresponding video-
taped behavior. The program automatically converts the different
video and kinematics time samplings to ensure matching between
kinematic and video events. The reach identification process began
by examining the video. A reach was identified when the following
criteria were met: (a) The object was located in the infant's
reachable space, (b) the infant was looking at the object or had
noticed it before reaching, and (c) the arm movement resulted in
one or two hands contacting the target.
Then the user searched for the video frames of hand-toy contact
and reach start. The frame of contact was always identified first
and was always unambiguously defined by the first contact of the
hand with the target. If the view of the hand was occluded by the
toy, the video frame of hand-toy contact was coded as the frame
of first toy displacement. Then, the user searched for the approx-
imate frame of reach initiation by moving the video backward
from the frame of contact until the estimated point of reach start.
This search was made by comparing the video to the displayed
kinematics. When reach initiation was also found, the user entered
both selected video frames (reach start and hand-toy contact) in
the program. The rigorous identification of the frame of reach
initiation was then automatically performed by the program, which
searched on the kinematic data the velocity minima, mat matched
Table 2
Amount of Kinematic Data Used to Analyze the Entire Interlimb Activity of the Upper
Arms Before, During, and After the Act of Reaching
Total seconds of
Participant Number of sessions movement processed
G.S. 37
N.Q. 37
J.A. 32
H.R. 34
Note. The number of sessions that contained usable data and the amount of data processed for the
year and per week are displayed for each infant.
507
the closest to the selected video frame. When reaches were biman-
ual, each arm was coded in separate passes. Agreements between
independent coders in identifying reach initiation was high (see
Corbetta & Thelen, 1995, for details).
Table 2 presents the amount of data that we used to analyze the
entire interlimb kinematics of each infant, including reaching and
nonreaching movements. It reports the number of sessions, the
total amount of movement processed for the year, and the corre-
sponding weekly average. Overall, the loss of data from our data
selection procedure ranged from 50% to 65% of the total amount
of data collected. These lost data were primarily nonreaching
movements. Of the remaining kinematic segments, reaches ac-
counted for about 10% to 20% of the total data, or a total of
approximately 300 reaches per infant (see Corbetta & Thelen,
1995). Thus, there was still a large body of reaches and nonreach-
ing movements.
Data Reduction and Dependent Measures
Our Results section contains three levels of analysis. The first
one describes the developmental shifts between uni- and bimanual
reaching. The second one identifies whether coordination tenden-
cies underlie the spontaneous, nonreaching interlimb activity of the
infants at the different ages. The third one shows how coordination
tendencies match the specific formation of uni- or bimanual reach-
ing. Described below are the data analysis and reduction proce-
dures for the two first levels of analysis.
Defining uni- and bimanual reaches. When reaches occurred,
our first goal was to define the type of interlimb coordination (uni-
or bimanually object oriented) and capture transitions between
these two reaching types in development. To do so, we defined
coding criteria that would primarily be sensitive to the patterns
between the limbs, which we could use with equal reliability
during the entire year but which would be independent from other
developmental changes in reaching (e.g., hand orientation or finger
aperture relative to the target). Indeed, using such criteria as an
index of goal directedness in the reach would be problematic
because hand apertures and hand shaping show dramatic changes
in development (e.g., Lockman et al., 1984).
Then, we categorized each reach as uni- or bimanual by applying
the following definitions: Bimanual reaches included bilateral
extensions of the arms toward the target and contacting the target
when both arm movements were performed with some overlap in
time. For example, arm extensions could be synchronized or
delayed in time, or they could move together only during a portion
of the movement. The contact with the target, however, did not
have to be bimanual, because, as described by Flament (1975),
infants frequently extend both arms toward the desired object but
then grasp it only with one hand.
Mean seconds (SD)
per session
2,351.36 63.55 (26.63)
2,036.41 55.04(31.15)
1,926.42 60.20 (24.45)
2,096.13 61.65 (28.02)
 508 CORBETTA AND THELEN
Unimanual reaches were defined as the unilateral extension of
one arm toward the toy, followed by the contact of that arm with
the toy. Thus, while one arm was reaching, the other arm could
either remain still or produce small nonobject-oriented motions on
the side of the body. This category also included reaches per-
formed with one arm at a time (i.e., when the second hand moved
toward the target while the first one hand already contacted the
target). This movement configuration, indeed, did not involve any
movement overlap in goal directedness.
Daniela Corbetta and a trained student coded separately all of
the data of each infant, basing their judgments on the videos played
at a normal speed. The identification of reaches in the trials was
performed with 100% agreement. The percentage of agreement
concerning the type of reach (uni- or bimanual) was 95% for N.Q.,
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95% for H.R., 97% for J.A., and 94% for G.S. (these percentages
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were calculated from the time that infants performed their first
reaches). Disagreements occurred when overlaps between object-
oriented arm extensions were very short or when alternating
reaches of each hand were performed closely in time. When
disagreements occurred, Daniela Corbetta reexamined trials in
slow motion to reassign them to the appropriate category.
Capturing coordination tendencies in the nonreaching interlimb
activity. Our second goal was to assess whether coordination
tendencies underlie the nonreaching interlimb activity to define
whether these tendencies match specific patterns of uni- or biman-
ual reaching. To capture these tendencies, we developed a method
that analyzed on-line the continuous coordination patterns between
the limbs as they moved during the entire trials. Then, we sub-
tracted the data corresponding to the previously identified reaching
segments and asked whether, within the remaining interlimb ac-
tivity, some coordination patterns tended to be produced and
maintained more often than others.
To analyze interlimb activity, we used a running correlation
technique that was applied to the continuous resultant velocity
profiles of both hands during every 14-s trial (or less, if data in the
trial were missing).1 We used a 1-s window size (i.e., a 150
data-point window) that was shifted frame by frame (i.e., every 7
ms) along the entire velocity profile of the segment of data.)2 At
every shift of the window, a correlation value was calculated.
These successive shifts of 7 ms resulted in a continuous correlation
function that fluctuated and described continuously the different
coordination patterns of the two arms as they were produced over
time. This method allowed us to identify three patterns of interlimb
coordination that could be defined as three types of coordination
tendencies (see Figures 1 and 2).
Figure 1 presents two forms of interlimb motion with related
spatiotemporal patterns. Figure 1A shows a pattern with a syn-
chronous coordination tendency. Both arms accelerated and de-
celerated together almost at the same time, and the resulting
correlation function fluctuated near high positive values. Figure IB
displays a pattern with a reversed coordination tendency. Both
arms accelerated and decelerated in opposite fashions, such as
accelerating with one arm while decelerating with the other, and
the resulting correlation function fluctuated around high negative
values.
In contrast, Figure 2 presents interlimb movements with unre-
lated spatiotemporal patterns. An unrelated coordination tendency
expresses total independence between arm movements. This is the
case if one arm moves slowly and continuously, while the other
one moves fast and discontinuously (Figure 2A), or if only one arm
moves while the other one remains still (Figure 2B). In both cases,
the resulting correlation functions fluctuated near zero values, thus
confirming that no common space-time relationship tied the ob-
served hand motions.
Coordination tendencies can be defined if any of these forms of
coordination (synchronous, reversed, or unrelated) tend to be pro-
duced or maintained more often than others over time. To find out
if coordination tendencies were present in the spontaneous inter-
limb activity of our infant subjects, we used the running correlation
technique on the entire kinematic data of each week. This allowed
us to capture the ensemble of coordination patterns produced
within each session. From the ensemble of correlation values
obtained within each session, we subtracted the values correspond-
ing to the reaching segments. Then, we searched for coordination
tendencies by examining across the remaining nonreaching data
how frequently the infants produced the different coordination
patterns. To do so, we condensed the ensemble of nonreaching
correlation values measured each week into a single frequency
histogram. This frequency histogram was obtained by dividing the
range of correlation values from — 1 to 1 into 20 ordinal categories
and by calculating how many times each movement category (or
coordination pattern) was reproduced during the entire nonreach-
ing session time. Next, we normalized the frequencies by dividing
them by the total number of nonreaching correlation values for that
session. The shape of the obtained distribution indicated whether
coordination tendencies were present or absent in the spontaneous
interlimb activity. Figures 3 and 4 display two examples of 9 s of
spontaneous motion revealing, respectively, a tendency of syn-
chrony and no coordination tendency.
Figure 3 shows that during these 9 s, both arms tended to
accelerate and decelerate in synchrony, as captured by the pre-
dominantly positive correlation function. By condensing the cor-
relation function into a single frequency histogram, we obtained an
asymmetrical distribution that confirmed that highly positively
correlated patterns were produced more frequently than reversed
or unrelated patterns. When such an asymmetrical distribution was
observed on a weekly data sample, we concluded that the predom-
inant coordination tendency underlying the spontaneous interlimb
activity during that week was a synchronous one.
If the interlimb kinematic profiles did not show a stable coor-
dination pattern over time, as illustrated in Figure 4, the histogram
revealed a distribution that was spread across many positive and
negative correlation values. This indicated that the interlimb mo-
tion was continuously changing. When such a histogram profile
was observed, we concluded that during that age session, no
particular coordination tendency predominated.
Results
In the following Results sections, we first present the
developmental fluctuations between uni- and bimanual
1
This procedure captured primarily the spatiotemporal syn-
chrony between arm movements, that is, whether movements
accelerated and decelerated together, rather than their spatiotem-
poral symmetry. Indeed, by analyzing the resultant speed of the
movements we eliminated the possibility of measuring movement
directionality. However, after extensive observation of infants
spontaneous interlimb activity, we concluded that synchrony be-
tween movements is a more fundamental metric of infants inter-
limb coordination than spatial symmetry, especially in the first
months when many movements have no apparent task demand for
symmetry.
2
The size of the window was determined by using the running
correlation technique on many trials containing various movement
frequencies. The 1-s window size was chosen as the best move-
ment descriptor, given the range of movement frequencies con-
tained in our data.
 DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF BIMANUAL COORDINATION 509

25
20
15
10
5
0
-5
1.0
0.5
0.0
-0.5
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

-1.0
2 3 a 10 11
Time (s) Time (s)

Figure 1. Related interlimb patterns. Top: Resultant speed of each arm during two segments of
motion of 4.5 s. Bottom: Corresponding correlation functions. A: Example of positively correlated
movements. B: Example of negatively correlated movements.

reaching as they evolved in each infant during the year.
Then we present developmental changes in the infants'
nonreaching interlimb activity, identify when coordination
tendencies emerged, and compare them to changes in ob-
served reaching. Finally, we provide additional evidence to
suggest how uni- or bimanual reaching patterns may relate
to nonreaching coordination tendencies.
Developmental Fluctuations Between Uni- and
Bimanual Reaching
Figures 5-8 present the interlimb patterning of the reach
as it evolved in each infant from the first attempts at 3-4
months old to the end of the first year. Unimanual and
bimanual reaches, as coded from the video, were normal-
ized for every week as a function of the total number of
reaches performed that same week.
Figures 5-8 present four different developmental pro-
files. These 4 infants not only began to reach at very
different chronological times but also showed variable fluc-
tuations and alternation in their developmental preferences
to reach with one or two arms.
N.Q. (Figure 5) first reached at 12 weeks old, predomi-
nantly using two arms. This initial bimanual preference
became clearly predominant between Weeks 15 and 20.
Then, at Week 21, N.Q. shifted to a predominantly uni-

140
120
100
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Time (s) Time (s)

figure 2. Unrelated interlimb patterns. Top: Resultant speed of each arm during two segments of
motion of 4.5 s. Bottom: Corresponding correlation functions. A and B show examples of uncor-
related movements.
 510 CORBETTA AND THELEN
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Figure 3. Example of interlimb pattern with a coordination tendency to synchronize movement

speeds. Top: Resultant speed of each arm during 9 s of motion. Bottom: Corresponding correlation
function and corresponding frequency histogram. The tendency of the correlation function to be
predominantly positive is captured by the asymmetrical distribution of frequency histogram.

manual reaching mode and maintained it for a long period
until Week 42. At the end of the first year, from 44 to 52
weeks old, he returned to primarily using two hands for
reaching.
G.S. (Figure 6), who performed his first reaching attempts
at Week 15, showed the most stable interlimb reaching
preference across the developmental year. His reaching
mode, predominantly bimanual, was maintained almost ev-
ery week, except at Weeks 25, 26, and 32, when unimanual
reaches briefly predominated.
Unlike N.Q. and G.S., H.R. (Figure 7), who reached for
the first time at Week 20, did not show clear initial prefer-
ences in using one or two arms for reaching. From Week 28,
however, she began to use predominantly bimanual reaches.
Then, from Week 34 she primarily used one arm for reach-
ing, even though the bimanual mode persisted until the end
of the year (especially at Weeks 40 and 42).
Finally, the last infant, J.A. (Figure 8), reached first at
Week 21. Similarly to N.Q. and G.S., he began to predom-
inantly reach with two arms. Then, from Week 25 to Week
40, J.A. did not show clear reaching preferences. Finally,
from Week 40, J.A. returned to reaching bimanually.

Figure 4. Example of interlimb pattern with no predominant coordination tendency. Top: Result-
ant speed of each arm during 9 s of motion. Bottom: Corresponding correlation function and
corresponding frequency histogram. The fluctuations of the correlation function between positive
and negative correlation values result in a more equally distributed frequency histogram.
 DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF BIMANUAL COORDINATION 511

90 -
N.Q. - 90

V)
d>
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i _
1 ' 8°

_c 1
o 60 - - 60
D
0) 50 -
40 -
i ^ i ^
- 50

- 40
30 -
20 -
10 -
n M M
i:

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.; :

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- 30
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n
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12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Age (weeks) Bimanual

Unlmanual

Figure 5. Percentage of uni- and bimanual reaches performed by infant N.Q. from 12 to 52
weeks old.

These first findings confirm the high variability and un-
stability of interlimb coordination associated with reaching
in the first year. Infants showed different interlimb prefer-
ences when they began to reach, and these preferences
shifted across the year following very different develop-
mental pathways. In every infant, the observed developmen-
tal transitions between uni- or bimanual reaching were
unrelated to modifications we introduced in our object-
presentation procedure. Because toy sizes also remained the
same, our next goal was to understand where these shifting
preferences in reaching came from. In the following section,
we ask whether these shifts in reaching were related to
coordination tendencies in the nonreaching activity and
whether these coordination tendencies showed similar fluc-
tuations over developmental time.
Developmental Fluctuations in Spontaneous
Interlimb Activity
Figures 9-12 present landscapes of the different patterns
of interlimb coordination found across the whole year by
analyzing infants' nonreaching interlimb kinematics. We
constructed these three-dimensional surfaces by lining up
by age the ensemble of frequency histograms obtained for
every week from the time series of the running correlation
functions. On each landscape, the back plane corresponds to
the percentage of synchronous or positively correlated
movements produced across development. The front plane
displays the percentage of reversed or negatively correlated
interlimb patterns. Finally, the surface in between represents

90 -
C;.: i„ - 90
; ; ; ; i
80 - - 80
70 -
1 '• -
| \ •. i - 70
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o 60 - |H 1 i - 60
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1
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- 40
30 - - 30
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12 16 20 24 28 32 36
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40 44
niMM
48 52
-I- o

Bimanual
Age (weeks) ••i U n i m a n u a l

Figure 6. Percentage of uni- and bimanual reaches performed by infant G.S. from 15 to 52
weeks old.
 512 CORBETTA AND THELEN

90 -
H.R - 90
\ - RO
80 -

Q)
JC
70 - ! i \
•
|
- 70
- 60
O 60 - \
D
Q) 50 -
40 -J
I
i 1

7
- 50
- 40
30 - - 30
20 - : - 20
10 - |J
j , - 10
I N I iim -H 1)1
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

0 --H- h-H-H-l- i ', :. U -+ \ -4 H H H \- 0

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52
Age (weeks) Bimanual
Unimanual

Figure 7. Percentage of uni- and bimanual reaches performed by infant H.R. from 20 to 52
weeks old.

unrelated (or uncorrelated) interlimb movements and other
forms of coordination between arms.
We interpolated these four landscapes by using an inverse
distance method (built in the graphics software Sigma Plot
5.0 from Jandel Scientific, San Rafael, California) to gen-
erate z values for an evenly spaced xy grid from the original
xyz triplet data. However, this transformation, which we
made for aesthetic purposes only, did not alter the general
shape of the original landscape. In addition, to allow com-
parisons between changes in nonreaching interlimb activity
and changes in patterns of reaching, we report above the
landscapes, the predominant uni- or bimanual reaching
modes as identified in the previous section.
The increase and decrease of peaks on the landscapes
correspond to the emergence and disappearance of coordi-
nation tendencies in the nonreaching interlimb activity. As
expected, Figures 9-12 reflect fluctuations that are similar
with those observed in the specific act of reaching.
In N.Q. (Figure 9), the first peak of positively correlated
movements revealing a synchrony tendency appeared at
Week 12, when N.Q. began to reach bimanually. Then, from
Week 15, his nonreaching interlimb activity remained pre-
dominantly positively correlated until Week 20. During that
same period, N.Q. reached predominantly with two arms.
From Week 21 to Week 42, N.Q.'s landscape showed a
decrease in his synchrony tendency. Moderate peaks of
positively correlated movement patterns still remained, but
moderate peaks of negatively correlated movement patterns
also emerged, revealing that N.Q. produced a broader range
of different coordination patterns and that a reversed ten-
dency was also characteristic of his interlimb activity. Dur-
ing that same period, from Week 21 to Week 42, N.Q.

90 - J.A. - 90
1 f
80 - - 80
0 70 - - 70
0 60 - - 60
O i
0> 50- - 50
s- 40 - - 40
O 1 ij
K 30 - - 30
•
20 - - 20
10 - - 10
i
0 - "'' \ I 1 -- 0
i\ 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52

Age ( w e e k s ) ^^ Bimanual
•• Unimanual

Figure 8. Percentage of uni- and bimanual reaches performed by infant J.A. from 21 to 52
weeks old.
 DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF BIMANUAL COORDINATION
35
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
-l.i
Figure 9. Landscape of the different patterns of spontaneous interlimb coordination that infant
N.Q. produced prior to and after the reach for every week from 5 to 52 weeks old.
reached predominantly with one arm. Finally, toward the
end of the year, a synchrony tendency reappeared at a high
rate. Again, during that same period, N.Q. returned to reach-
ing with two arms.
Like N.Q., G.S. (Figure 10) began to reach predominantly
with two arms. Similarly, at reach onset, G.S.'s landscape
revealed increasing peaks of synchrony tendency in his
nonreaching interlimb activity. However, unlike N.Q., G.S.
maintained his bimanual reaching mode during almost the
entire year, except at Weeks 25, 26, and 32, when uni-
manual reaches briefly appeared. Similarly, G.S.'s land-
scape revealed that his tendency of synchrony in his non-
reaching interlimb activity clearly predominated throughout
the year. It is also interesting to note that G.S., who was the
most bimanual of these 4 infants, did not produce many
reversed patterns of interlimb coordination in his non-
reaching activity. As illustrated by the front plane of his
landscape, negatively correlated patterns were very rarely
produced.
H.R. (Figure 11) did not reveal preferred reaching pat-
terns until Week 28. At Week 28, however, she began to
show a clear preference for bimanual reaching. Accord-
ingly, the landscape of her nonreaching interlimb activity
did not reveal a strong synchrony tendency until Week 28,
when the bimanual reaching mode became predominant.
Then, from Week 34, H.R. reached primarily unimanually,
except at Weeks 40 and 42, when the bimanual reaching
mode shortly reappeared. During the same period, her non-
reaching interlimb activity did not reveal a predominant
coordination tendency, except around Weeks 40 and 42,
when a tendency of synchrony reemerged.
513
Finally, J.A.'s first reaches were bimanual (Figure 12).
During this first period, however, J.A. revealed a synchrony
tendency in his nonreaching interlimb activity during one
week only. J.A.'s initial reaching preference disappeared a
few weeks after reach onset and until Week 40. During the
same period, J.A. did not reveal coordination tendencies in
his nonreaching interlimb activity. From Week 40, how-
ever, when he returned to bimanual reaching, he also
showed a strong tendency of synchrony in his nonreaching
interlimb activity.
Thus, in the four infants, preferences to reach bimanually
appeared when a synchrony tendency predominated in their
spontaneous, nonreaching interlimb activity, and prefer-
ences to reach unimanually appeared when the synchrony
tendency decreased. We quantified this relationship be-
tween reaching patterns and nonreaching patterns by (a)
cumulating for each week and each infant the percentage of
positively correlated nonreaching movements falling be-
tween the values of .7 and 1.0 (for this measure we used the
original normalized frequencies and not the interpolated
value from the landscapes), and (b) correlating these cumu-
lated values with the percentage of bimanual reaches pro-
duced each week by each infants. These correlations are
displayed for each infant separately in the four scattergrams
of Figure 13. Each point represents 1 week of data, plotted
as a function of both the percentage of bimanual reaches and
the percentage of positively correlated nonreaching inter-
limb patterns.
These four scattergrams substantiate the relationship be-
tween the preference of the infants to reach with two hands
and their tendency of synchrony in their nonreaching inter-
 514 CORBETTA AND THELEN
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Figure 10. Landscape of the different patterns of spontaneous interlimb coordination that infant
G.S. produced prior to and after the reach for every week from 5 to 52 weeks old.
limb activity; the more they tended to synchronize their
spontaneous movements, the more they reached bimanually.
This relationship was highly significant in the 4 infants
(Pearson's one-tailed correlation, p < .0001).
Effects of Coordination Tendencies on the
Formation of Reaching Patterns
The significant correlations between change in reaching
and change in nonreaching interlimb activity indicate that
both reaching and nonreaching movements may share com-
mon coordination dynamics. However, our categories of
uni- and bimanual reaching lumped together finer patterns
of coordination within the reach. For example, in bimanual
reaches both arms could move in perfect synchrony or with
lags of various durations. Similarly, in unimanual reaches,
the nonreaching arm might be engaged in synchronous but
nonreaching activity. In this section, we analyze in more
detail the interlimb coordination characteristics of the reach
itself to better understand their relationship to the coordi-
nation tendencies of the spontaneous interlimb activity. As
mentioned earlier, reaches may result from the interaction
between the infants' intentions to obtain the toy and then-
intrinsic coordination tendencies. We wanted to know if
bimanual reaches, which emerged from a background of
predominantly synchronous interlimb patterns, were also
performed in synchrony.
To address this issue we used the kinematic data corre-
sponding to the reaching segments of each first-reaching
arm (whether these reaches were performed with one arm
alone or in conjunction with the other arm). Next, we
searched for the same overlapping segment in the kinematic
file of the other arm. Finally, we performed individual
correlation analyses on every uni- and bimanual reaching
segment that contained available data for both hands.
This measure described the interlimb coordination pat-
terns within the reach as follows: For bimanual reaches, if
both arms reached in the same time as illustrated in Figure
14A, high positive correlations were obtained. If both arms
reached with a time lag in reach start or performed different
spatio-temporal patterns, low- or negative correlation values
were obtained, as shown in Figures 14B and 14C.
Accordingly, for unimanual reaches, if one arm reached
while the other arm was still, low correlations were ob-
tained, as illustrated in Figure 14D. If the nonreaching arm
produced some nonobject-oriented motion while the other
arm reached, the correlation values could be low or high and
positively or negatively correlated, as shown in Figures 14E
and 14F.
The ensemble of correlation values obtained for all uni-
and bimanual reaches across development are shown in
Figure 15 for each infant separately. Infants produced dif-
ferent coordination patterns within the reach regardless of
the type of reach (uni- or bimanual). Note that positively
correlated bimanual reaches occurred more often in 3 out of
4 infants toward the end of the first year (see N.Q., H.R.,
 DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF BIMANUAL COORDINATION
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-1
Figure 11. Landscape of the different patterns of spontaneous interlimb coordination that infant
H.R. produced prior to and after the reach for every week from 5 to 52 weeks old.
and J.A.), however, these bimanual reaches were still not
systematically synchronous. Thus, this analysis revealed
that the coordination patterns of reaching alone, even
though infants were clearly reaching with either one or two
arms, did not always match the coordination tendencies of
the nonreaching interlimb activity. A synchrony tendency in
the nonreaching interlimb activity did not necessarily lead
to synchronous bimanual reaches, and the absence of syn-
chrony tendency did not necessarily lead to uncorrelated
unimanual reaches.
This last result suggests that coordination tendencies may
have constrained the preferred range of possibilities of hand
use in reaching (i.e., two hands when tendency is synchro-
nous), although they did not rigidly limit interlimb coordi-
nation within the reach; reaching coordination patterns were
very variable. One possible explanation is that interlimb
coordination within the reach itself was affected by the
movement conditions prior to the reach (i.e., the position of
the hands in space or the speed of the movement at reach
initiation), which clearly were not controlled by our exper-
imental design. We do know, for example, that some
reaches were initiated after a short pause of the hands,
whereas others were completely embedded in a continuous
stream of behavior (see Corbetta & Thelen, 1995). A second
possible explanation is that the goal of obtaining the toy,
which is defined by a specific location in space, may have
tuned or perturbed the underlying coordination tendencies
of the spontaneous behavior during the transition to reach-
515
ing. It is conceivable, for example, that the visual and
proprioceptive information used during the act of reaching
imposed new constraints on the continuous motion of the
limbs and modified the coordination patterns between limbs
as the arms were getting closer to the target. Within such an
interpretation, synchronous spontaneous interlimb patterns
may have elicited a two-handed motion toward the target,
but as the hands approached the target, the tendency to
synchrony may have been modified because movements
were newly driven by the goal to intercept the target.
Figure 16 illustrates a two-handed reach embedded in a
spontaneous sequence of synchronous movements. This fig-
ure shows that the synchronous interlimb pattern preceding
the act of reaching (corresponding in this example to suc-
cessive flaps) changed during the act of reaching as one
hand approached the target. Although both arms began to
reach closely in time, the movement speed and timing of
each arm changed during the reach. The primary reaching
hand kept an almost identical movement frequency during
the transition from flapping to reaching, and the second
reaching hand lagged behind the first hand, only increasing
its movement speed as the first hand approached the target.
Discussion
Infants' shifting and idiosyncratic patterns of hand use
have puzzled developmentalists for more than 50 years. The
 516 CORBETTA AND THELEN

35
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1.0

Figure 12. Landscape of the different patterns of spontaneous interlimb coordination that infant
J.A. produced prior to and after the reach for every week from 5 to 52 weeks old.

goal in this research was to identify coordination tendencies shifts between uni- and bimanual reaching did reflect sim-
in the development of early interlimb activity and to ask ilar changes in the spontaneous coordination tendencies of
whether these shifting patterns in reaching were related to the arms. When infants reached primarily with two arms,
such coordination tendencies. We found that developmental their nonreaching interlimb activity tended to be synchro-
nized, and when infants reached primarily with one arm,
their nonreaching interlimb activity did not reveal predom-
100 ODO O/ inant coordination tendencies. These periods were not
strictly age related, as individual infants had their own
80
patterns of ebb and flow, as originally noted by Gesell and
60 Ames (1947). These results suggest that the development of
goal-oriented behaviors in infancy may be related, as they
40
are in adults, to existing and preferred underlying forms of
20 coordination which constitute the substrate from which be-
r=.76 r=.81 havioral patterns emerge.
0
Shifting epochs of patterns of coordination are not con-
100 fined to reaching movements. They have been found in
early hand-to-mouth (Smith, 1995) and object-to-mouth be-
80 haviors (Rochat, 1993), in infant leg patterns (Thelen, Rid-
60 ley-Johnson, & Fisher, 1983), and also later during child-
hood in tasks requiring simultaneous and combined hand
40 activities (Bruml, 1972; Corbetta, 1989). Rochat (1993), for
20 example, observed that the transport of an object to the
mouth is performed with two hands at 3 months, but it is
r=.62 r=.77
0 performed only with one hand at 2, 4, and 5 months.
0 20 40 60 0 20 40 60 Additionally, Smith (1995) found that the emergence of
X of synchronous movement* X of synchronous movsmsnts object-to-mouth behaviors were related to similarly pat-
Figure 13. Correlations between percentage of bimanual terned spontaneous hand-to-mouth behaviors.
reaches and percentage of positively correlated nonreaching move- Thelen et al. (1983) described a similar phenomenon in
ments (between .7 and 1.0) by participant. spontaneous, supine kicking movements (see also Gesell,
 DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF BIMANUAL COORDINATION 517

Bimanual reaches
60
50
40
30
20
10
0 .961 .019 -.484
4000 4500 5000 4000 4500 5000 2000 2500 3000
Unimanual reaches
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60
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

X.
o
50
40
30
20
10 --- .781
0
6500 7000 3000 3500 2000 2500
Time (mm) T1m» (ms) Time (ms)

Figure 14. Examples of uni- and bimanual reaches with correlated and uncorrelated movement
speeds between arms. A: Bimanual reach positively correlated; both arms reached in the same time.
B: Poorly correlated bimanual reach; one arm began to reach before the other arm, and each arm
reached with different patterns. C: Bimanual reach negatively correlated; one arm began to reach
before the other arm, and each arm reached with alternating speeds. D: Uncorrelated unimanual
reach; one arm remained still while the other arm reached. E: Unimanual reach poorly correlated;
the nonreaching arm produced some nonobject oriented activity while the other arm reached. F:
Unimanual reach positively correlated; the nonreaching arm produced some correlated nonobject
oriented activity while the other arm reached. The solid line represents the first reaching arm; and
the dashed line represents the second reaching arm in bimanual reaches and the nonreaching arm in
unimanual reaches.

1939, and Touwen, 1976, for qualitative descriptions).
Thelen et al. categorized bilateral kick patterns and calcu-
lated interlimb kick latencies in 8 infants followed every
other week from Week 2 until Week 26. In the newborn
period, there was a high proportion of rapid, alternating leg
kicks, with a majority of kicks initiated within 1 s of the
kick in the contralateral leg. After the first month, infants
shifted dramatically to single leg kicking, but with no con-
sistent lateral bias. Additionally, the proportion of in-phase
kicks that was very low initially increased for all the infants
during the first 6 months, often with striking discontinuities
in the appearance and disappearance of simultaneous coor-
dination. Within this overall pattern, however, "there was
notable variability in developmental course among the in-
fants and within each subject" (Thelen et al., 1983, p. 33),
especially in the frequency of individual preference shifts.
Thus, in both arms and legs, infants express definite coor-
dination preferences, but these preferences are both limb
specific—alternation was rarely seen in arm movements—
and idiosyncratic to individual babies.
Similarly, during childhood, patterns of interlimb coordi-
nation are not always stable and may fluctuate before as-
suming adult-like patterns. For example, BrunU (1972)
found that kindergarten children tended to perform biman-
ual tasks such as threading beads, clapping, or winding a
thread onto a spool by moving each hand against each other.
Older children and adults on the contrary, were less domi-
nated by this symmetrical tendency. They generally held
one hand still while the other hand wound, clapped, or put
the bead on the thread. These developmental transitions in
interlimb patterning are not always progressive or linear.
For example, the coordination pattern involved in another
asymmetrical task (cutting out paper circles with scissors)
fluctuated between five and nine years old (Corbetta, 1989).
By five years of age, children could manipulate the scissors
with one hand while holding the paper steady with the other.
However, from 5 to 9 years old the shoulder rotations
involved in producing the curved trajectory alternated be-
tween symmetrical and asymmetrical patterns; that is, chil-
dren alternated between rotating both shoulders or rotating
only one shoulder.
The present study is the first to describe coordination
 518 CORBETTA AND THELEN

o Blmcmual reaches • U n l m a n u a l reaches

1.0
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4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52
Age (weeks)

Figure 15. Correlations between the movement speeds of both limbs during every uni- and
bimanual reaches produced by each participant as a function of age.

tendencies of infant arm movements and their natural evo-
lution over the first year using real-time kinematic data. It
represents the first three steps of a dynamic systems strat-
egy, as outlined in the introduction: identifying collective
variables, laying out their dynamics, and identifying periods
of stability and change. The fourth step is to suggest pos-
sible control parameters (i.e., components that move the
system through its developmental shifts). Here we can only
speculate. What factors influence these dramatic shifts in
coordination patterns?
To begin to understand the coordination shifts, let us refer
again to the studies of adult bimanual coordination (Kelso,
1984; Kelso & Schb'ner, 1988; Scholz et al., 1988; Schoner
& Kelso, 1988; Schoner et al., 1992; Zanone & Kelso,
1992). These studies highlighted the tension between what
the performer wants (or is instructed) to do and the natural
tendencies of the system to prefer certain modes of coordi-
nation. The performed patterns were always a product of
these interactions within the particular task demands of the
experimental situations. When movement frequency was
high, intrinsic tendencies dominated intentional goals, and
maintaining an unstable pattern was difficult. Even at mod-
erate frequencies, performers had more difficulty intention-
ally switching from a stable to an unstable mode. Yet, with
intensive training, individuals could disrupt these autono-
mous tendencies and establish new stable preferences.
In the adult system, the parameters engendering coordi-
nation shifts were under tight experimental control. Re-
searchers manipulated the timing and energetic demands of
the task as well as the intentional goals. In infants, these
parameters are not so well delineated. Because infants can-
not be instructed, they determine the way they want to
move, which may be fast or slow. Although we feel confi-
dent that the infants in this study maintained the overall goal
of obtaining the attractive toy, we cannot say whether they
wanted to use one hand or two to do so. Nonetheless, we
believe that the parallels are striking between the adult
coordination dynamics and the emerging bimanual patterns
in infants.
First, in adults (Kelso, 1984; Kelso & Schoner, 1988), the
speed of the movements was an important parameter on the
coordination dynamics, with faster movements strengthen-
 DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF BIMANUAL COORDINATION 519
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Time (s)

Figure 16. Example of bimanual reach emerging from a spontaneous interlimb sequence of
synchronous movements. Top: Resultant displacement of each hand normalized as a function of toy
location during the transition from flapping to reaching. Bottom: Corresponding movement speed of
each hand. The solid bars define the beginning and end of the first hand reach. The dashed bars
define the beginning and end of the second hand reach.

ing the intrinsic preference for in-phase coupling (see also
Swinnen, Walter, Semen, & Vandendriessche, 1992;
Walter & Swinnen, 1990). Faster movements require more
energy, and in infants there is suggestive evidence that
high-energy states may increase the synchronous coupling
of the limbs. In particular, when infants have strong, force-
ful, and fast movements, they are also more synchronous in
both reaching and nonreaching movements. For example,
when they first began reaching, infants N.Q. and G.S. were
highly energetic, producing large and fast movements that
were predominantly synchronous, and their reaches were
mainly bimanual. In contrast, at reach onset, H.R. and J.A.
were very calm infants whose movements were relatively
slow and small and they did not show strong preferences in
their coordination tendencies (Thelen et al., 1993).
We found similar relations between activity level and
coordination in the infants' later reaching development
(Thelen, Corbetta, & Spencer, in press). H.R., for example,
became more active during the middle period of the first
year. During this same period, we observed the appearance
of synchronized coordination tendencies and an increase in
the proportion of bimanual reaches. For J.A., an active
period occurred at the end of the first year; his most biman-
ual period in reaching appeared at the same time. Likewise,
in N.Q., periods of bimanual coordination were associated
with high levels of general activity, and he was more
unilateral in weeks when his general level of activity was
more quiet. G.S. was the most active infant throughout the
first year, and the most bimanual in reaching and most
synchronous in spontaneous movements.
Thus, one plausible influence on the shifting tendencies in
infants is the energetic status of the limbs. What is the
nature of this coupling? One characteristic of early infant
movements is their relatively undifferentiated form. When
young babies get excited, they wiggle all their limbs. In the
present study, infants often reached for objects by extending
not only both arms but also their legs (and sometimes their
heads). It appears as if activity is widely distributed at
certain levels of neural excitation and that one important
element in becoming skilled is learning to isolate the forces
and channel them only to the needed limbs. Periods of
synchronous arm use, therefore, may reflect the inability to
inhibit this distributed response across the shoulder girdle,
either in spontaneous movements or when lifting the arm to
reach. We have provided preliminary evidence that this may
be the case. In infant N.Q., the shift to unimanual reaching
was associated with lowered muscle torque in the nonreach-
ing arm, suggesting active inhibition (Corbetta & Thelen,
1994). Indeed, the tendency for the movements to overflow
into the nonfunctioning limb is well documented in children
and may persist well into later childhood (Lazarus & Todor,
1987; Todor & Lazarus, 1986).
Although we believe that the energetic status of the baby
influences both reaching and nonreaching coordination, this
explanation by itself is not sufficient for understanding the
processes by which coordination shifts during the first year.
 520 CORBETTA AND THELEN
One could still ask: What causes the changes in infants'
activity levels that accompany hand pattern shifts? We
cannot answer this question definitively. For instance, the
infant G.S. was always an active, energetic baby, whereas
H.R. was calm most of the time. But within these temper-
amental differences, we can only speculate as to why, in
some months, infants moved more and faster, and more
synchronously, than in other months. Perhaps there was
increased motivation to reach for the toy, changes in
strength or muscle tone, or in metabolic rate. Thelen et al.
(1983), for instance, did not find a relation between the
strength of the predominant leg pattern of kicking and
arousal level, a measure of the infants' general excitement.
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Thelen et al. speculated that the autonomous coordination
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shifts in the lower limbs might result from asynchronous
maturation of muscle strength or predominant muscle tone
or from competition from postural biases such as asymmet-
ric tonic neck reflexes. These explanations may be true for
the arms as well.
A second reason why energetic status alone is an insuf-
ficient control parameter is that the correspondence between
activity and bimanual synchrony was not perfect. We did
not observe, for example, specific coordination tendencies
in infant movements in the periods preceding reach onset.
Contrast, for instance, G.S.'s irregular landscape (Figure
10) before his reach onset at Week 15 to the strong syn-
chronous tendency thereafter. It is possible, therefore, that
the repeated acts of trying to reach for seen objects them-
selves imposed organization on the interlimb system ini-
tially and that this mutual influence continued throughout
the year. In such a view, we can speculate that initially the
concerted effort to stiffen the arm to reach, either to damp
out uncontrolled movements or to lift it against gravity
(Thelen et al., 1993), recruits homologous muscles across
the shoulder girdle. Likewise, the functional efficiency of
using only one hand to grasp a small object may, through
repeated efforts, serve to decouple tight interlimb synergies.
It is also possible that, later in development, new abilities to
manipulate more than one object at a time, such as inserting
or fitting a shape into a container, banging blocks at mid-
line, and so on, contribute to the return of the bimanual and
synchronous tendencies that we observed in these infants
during the middle or end of their first year.
This process, in which the intentionality of the act is also
a control parameter on the coordination dynamics, is of
course exactly paralleled in the adult experiments, in which
individuals were trained to perform novel patterns that
competed with their intrinsic tendencies (Scholz et al.,
1988; Zanone & Kelso, 1992). In infants, therefore, it may
be that the very acts of adaptive reaching serve to modify
the intrinsic dynamics, albeit in nonlinear ways. In other
words, several shifts may be witnessed as intentions and
abilities interact and are mutually influential throughout the
first year.
Finally, infants' reaching and nonreaching changing ten-
dencies may both be influenced by the parallel development
of other related skills. For instance, it is not known how and
when infants learn to perceive the boundaries between ob-
jects requiring one or two hands for grasping, although there
is some evidence that this ability is in place by the middle
of the year (Clifton et al., 1991; Newell, Scully, McDonald,
& Baillargeon, 1989). Likewise, coordination tendencies
and manual activities may both be affected by changes in
the general state of postural control. Rochat (1992), for
instance, found that infants who were unable to sit alone
tended to reach more bimanually, whereas self-sitter infants
tended to reach more unimanually. Similarly, Goldfield
(1993) found that transitions from rocking to crawling were
related to fluctuations in the transitions of hand preference
for reaching. Infants who rocked, but did not crawl, also did
not show hand preference for reaching; they contacted the
target with either hand. Crawling infants, in contrast, had
stable lateral asymmetries and reached consistently with the
same hand. Goldfield speculated that the shift in hand
preference served as the control parameter for crawl onset.
However, as in the present data, the direction of causality is
not clear; it is equally plausible that discovering how to
crawl changes the strength of lateral hand preference.
Overall, these results suggest that changing forms of
coordination in the first year do not result from a single
factor but from the reciprocal influence of many developing
subsystems (Thelen, 1986). The process of identifying the
particular control parameters must now proceed through
experimental manipulation, as suggested by the dynamic
systems strategy. Indeed, the dynamic approach provides
specific guidelines for discovering agents of change. The
stability of the system can be probed by manipulating pu-
tative control parameters. If pattern shifts occur, then the
system is sensitive to that parameter. When systems are
stable, they are resilient in the face of such perturbations.
For instance, Corbetta and Thelen (1992) found that syn-
chronous bilateral arm coupling was disrupted when they
added weights to one arm in 5- and 6-month-old infants,
suggesting that load change may be a parameter to measure
stability and change in the coordination dynamics. But in
development, agents of change may themselves shift during
ontogeny: A proportionally equivalent load perturbation did
not disrupt coordination when the same infants were two
months older. This suggests that whereas the coordination
pattern was sensitive to energetic factors at the younger age,
the intentional pattern was protected from the weight per-
turbation in the older infants.
The effect of intentionality as a control parameter can also
be tested by experimental manipulation, once the stability
landscape of the behavior is known. For example, Thelen et
al. (1983) found that 3-month-old infants kicked primarily
in a single leg or alternating mode. Could these infants be
induced to counter their coordination tendencies if intro-
duced to a novel task? Recently, Thelen (1994) addressed
this question. The task was to activate an overhead mobile
by means of a ribbon tied around the infants' ankles.
(Young infants find this highly motivating and learn quickly
to increase the frequency and vigor of their kicking.) But, if
infants' ankles were tethered together with a soft elastic
cuff, they could switch more efficiently from their preferred
single or alternating modes to a more simultaneous pattern.
After a few minutes, infants indeed shifted preferences to
in-phase kicking (Thelen, 1994). Thus, for infants, as for
 DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF BIMANUAL COORDINATION
adults, new patterns can arise from the effect of task de-
mands on existing coordination tendencies.
We believe that important insights into developmental
processes can result from a dynamic perspective and, in
particular, from the idea that new skills must arise as mod-
ifications of already existing coordination tendencies. One
critical issue in developmental theory is the appearance of
stagelike changes—qualitative shifts in behavior—despite
the continuity of the processes involved. The fluctuations of
interlimb patterns stand as a case in point. Dynamic systems
theory accounts for such nonlinear changes as phase shifts
when parameters disrupt the stability of current patterns and
offers a principled strategy to discover and test specific
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agents of change. Although we have illustrated these prin-
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ciples with early perceptual-motor activities, we believe
they can be profitably extended to other domains (see
Thelen & Smith, 1994).
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Received February 16, 1994
Revision received January 19, 1995
Accepted March 17, 1995 •