Exploring Links Between Sensorimotor and Visuospatial Body Representations in Infancy

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore whether sensorimotor and visuospatial body representations interact in early development. Sixty-two infants between 6 and 15 months of age were tested for visuospatial body representations via a human body visual discrimination task. Their motor activity during the discrimination task, as well as motor development and imitation skill, were assessed as indexes of sensorimotor body representations. Based on research with adults, we predicted inter-correlations between performance on the visuospatial body task and infants' sensorimotor development; however, no significant associations were observed. Discussion speculates on developmental trajectories for these two distinct body representation systems.

Notes

The work described in this article was funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award to the first author and formed part of her doctoral thesis under the supervision of the second author.

*p < .05 significance values are two-tailed

**p < .01 significance values are two-tailed

***p < .001; significance values are two-tailed.