Infants Return to Two-Handed Reaching When They Are Learning to Walk

Abstract

The authors examined whether infants of about 1 year return to 2-handed reaching when they begin to walk independently. Infants (N = 9) were followed longitudinally before, during, and after their transition to upright locomotion. Every week, the infants' reaching responses and patterns of interlimb coordination were screened in 3 tasks involving different adaptive reaching responses. Before the onset of upright locomotion, the infants responded to each task adaptively. Following walking onset, they increased their rate of 2-handed responses in all tasks. The 2-handed responses declined when the infants gained better balance control. The results suggest that infants' return to 2-handed reaching is experience dependent. Those findings are discussed in terms of the integration of new developing motor skills into existing cognitive and motor repertoires.

Key Words:

• developmental discontinuities
• infancy
• interlimb coordination
• reaching
• walking