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Investigating Motor Skill Learning Processes with a Robotic Manipulandum
Published on: February 12, 2017
Systems in development: motor skill acquisition facilitates three-dimensional object completion
Kasey C Soska1, Karen E Adolph, Scott P Johnson
1Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, Room 458, New York, NY 10003, USA. kasey.soska@nyu.edu
None:
How do infants learn to perceive the backs of objects that they see only from a limited viewpoint? Infants' 3-dimensional object completion abilities emerge in conjunction with developing motor skills--independent sitting and visual-manual exploration. Infants at 4.5 to 7.5 months of age (n = 28) were habituated to a limited-view object and tested with volumetrically complete and incomplete (hollow) versions of the same object. Parents reported infants' sitting experience, and infants' visual-manual exploration of objects was observed in a structured play session. Infants' self-sitting experience and visual-manual exploratory skills predicted looking at the novel, incomplete object on the habituation task. Further analyses revealed that self-sitting facilitated infants' visual inspection of objects while they manipulated them. The results are framed within a developmental systems approach, wherein infants' sitting skill, multimodal object exploration, and object knowledge are linked in developmental time.
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