Locomotor Experience Research Articles

Locomotion, Active Choice, and Spatial Memory in Children

In two studies, children between 4 and 6 years old were tested on a radial search task requiring nonredundant sampling of eight identically labeled positions in a room. In the training phase (5 days), children made free choices by walking between positions, were passively transported in a pushchair, actively directed their own route from a pushchair, or were led on foot to positions selected by the experimenter. When tested (whether walking or directing while seated in a pushchair), children who had either walked independently or directed the experimenter while being pushed performed competently; those led on foot without spatial choice performed almost as well. Only the children who had neither independent locomotor experience nor autonomous choice performed very poorly. The results are related to neurobiological models of spatial cognition and may have implications for the transportation of children with mobility problems.

Self-produced locomotion and the development of responsiveness to linear perspective and texture gradients.

Replicated and extended research on the development of sensitivity to the depth cues of linear perspective and texture gradients by using a more sensitive method (Experiment 1) and by investigating the role of self-produced locomotion in facilitating the onset of sensitivity to information (Experiment 2). Using a method similar to Yonas, Granrud, Arterberry, and Hanson (1986), infants' reaching to the pictorially closer object served as the dependent measure. Changes in methodology provided an increase in the difference between 7-month-olds' monocular and binocular reaching performance, but 5-month-olds failed to show evidence of sensitivity to the depth cues investigated. Experiment 2 found no difference in monocular reaching performance among 7-month-old infants with varying degrees of locomotor experience, suggesting that self-produced locomotion may not play a role in facilitating the onset of sensitivity to static-monocular depth information.

Locomotor Experience: A Facilitator of Spatial Cognitive Development

2 studies were designed to test the prediction that spatial search strategies (i.e., "object permanence") may be influenced by locomotor experience. Infants were assigned to 3 groups based on locomotor history: prelocomotor, prelocomotor with walker-assisted experience, and hands-and-knees creeping. Infants in all groups were 8.5 months of age. Results showed that hands-and-knees and walker-assisted locomotor experience facilitated spatial search performance. The longer that infants had been moving, the higher their scores. Furthermore, there were no differences between the hands-and-knees and prelocomotor/walker-assisted groups, suggesting that the relation between locomotor experience and spatial search performance was not merely a function of the maturation of prone progression. A third study found that the quality of locomotion affected object permanence performance: Belly crawlers performed differently than infants with hands-and-knees or walker experience, insofar as they performed at prelocomotor levels regardless of weeks of locomotor experience. Taken together, the pattern of findings suggests that infants with more efficient modes of locomotion are more likely to profit from the experiences generated by locomotion.

Locomotor Experience: A Facilitator of Spatial Cognitive Development

Locomotor Experience: A Facilitator of Spatial Cognitive Development

Changes in infant social preference associated with self-produced locomotor experience

The cytoskeletal activity of motile or adherent cells is frequently seen to induce detectable displacements of sufficiently compliant substrata. The physics of this phenomenon is discussed in terms of the classical theory of small-strain, plane-stress elasticity. The main results of such analysis is a transform expressing the displacement field of the elastic substrate as an integral over the traction field. The existence of this transform is used to derive a Bayesian method for converting noisy measurements of substratum displacement into "images" of the actual traction forces exerted by adherent or locomoting cells. Finally, the Monte Carlo validation of the statistical method is discussed, some new rheological studies of films are presented, and a practical application is given.

Differential rearing and free versus forced exploration

Three groups of rats were reared from day 25 to day 65 in either (1) a large free environment cage containing manipulanda, (2) individual restricted environment cages that afforded little sensory or locomotor experience, or (3) in normal cages. Ss were given a brief home cage emergence test designed to evoke “free” exploration. “Forced” exploration was observed by placing each animal in a large cage containing a variety of small objects. FE animals exhibited more exploratory activity in the home cage emergence test but less object exploration in the forced environment.