The Relation Between Locomotor Experience and Spatial Knowledge in Infancy

Abstract

The relation between the infant’s activity in the environment and his or her cognitive and perceptual development has been discussed by a number of theorists. This relation was addressed in the studies presented here, by examining the effects of different types of motor activity on the infant’s ability to keep track of the relative locations of two objects. In the first experiment, the specific action used by infants in encountering two objects was varied, while in the second experiment, the responses of infants who varied in their past experience with independent locomotion were compared. Relations between these two types of motor activity (type of exploratory behavior and amount of locomotor experience) and the infant’s spatial abilities can be viewed in light of the theories of Piaget and Gibson.