Infant sitting postural control appears robust across changes in surface context

Abstract

Aim of the study

Independent sitting requires the control of the involved body segments over the base of support using information obtained from the three sensory systems (visual, vestibular, and somatosensory). The contribution of somatosensory information in infant sitting has not been explored. To address this gap, we altered the context of the sitting support surface and examined the infants’ immediate postural responses.

Materials and methods

Ten 7-month-old typically developing infants sat on compliant and firm surfaces in one session. Spatial, frequency, and temporal measures of postural control were obtained using center of pressure data.

Results

Our results suggest that infants’ postural sway is not immediately affected by the different types of foam surface while sitting.

Conclusions

It seems that mature sitter infants are able to adapt to different environmental constraints by disregarding the distorted somatosensory information from the support surface and relying more on their remaining senses (visual and vestibular) to control their sitting posture.

Keywords:

• Development
• posture
• somatosensory

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the infants and their families for participating in the study. We would also like to acknowledge Dr Fabien Cignetti for providing feedback on data inspection and analysis.

Disclosure statement

Dr Nicholas Stergiou receives royalties from CRC Press and Human Kinetics Publishers, and he receives compensation as a consultant from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Delaware. The remaining authors declare that there are no financial ties to products or conflicts of interest regarding this study and the publication of this article.