A Three-Stage Model for the Acquisition of Anticipatory Planning Skills for Grip Selection during Object Manipulation in Young Children.

Kathrin Wunsch,Matthias Weigelt

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00958

Kathrin Wunsch, Matthias Weigelt

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00958

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Abstract

When people manipulate objects, they plan their movements in advance of the execution in order to reach a desired goal or goal state at the end of the action. This can be nicely illustrated by the end-state comfort effect (ESC; Rosenbaum et al., 1990). For example, when people reach for an inverted cup, they will anticipate the final part of the manual rotation and are willing to adopt an initial awkward thumb-down grasp to end the rotation maneuver in a comfortable thumb-up posture (overturned-glass-task, OGT; Fischman, 1997). To this end, the grasping action is planned by selecting a particular final posture out of a set of stored postures (Rosenbaum et al., 2001). According to the “concept of order of planning” by Rosenbaum et al. (2012), such an anticipatory strategy is reminiscent of second-order planning, which entails not only planning for immediate task demands (as in first-order planning), but also considers what one wants to do with the object afterwards, such as holding the cup comfortable to pour tea into it.

Highlights

Specialty section: This article was submitted to Developmental Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
They plan their movements in advance of the execution in order to reach a desired goal or goal state at the end of the action. This can be nicely illustrated by the end-state comfort effect (ESC; Rosenbaum et al, 1990)
While today there is much evidence on the development of the ESC effect in young children, so far, there is no theoretical model on how these motor planning skills are acquired

Summary

Introduction

Specialty section: This article was submitted to Developmental Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. While today there is much evidence on the development of the ESC effect in young children (for a review see Wunsch et al, 2013), so far, there is no theoretical model on how these motor planning skills are acquired.

Results

Conclusion