The Development of Sensorimotor Intelligence in Infants

Infancy is the most dynamic part of human development. During this period, all basic sensorimotor and cognitive abilities are established. In this chapter, we will trace some of the important achievements of this development with a focus on how infants achieve predictive control of actions, i.e., how they come to coordinate their behavior with the ongoing events in the world without lagging behind. With the maturation of the brain, new possibilities that have profound effects on cognition open up. Some of them are core abilities, i.e., they function at birth or very early in development. Important examples are the structured perception of objects and surfaces and the control of arm movements. Closely after birth, infants move their arms to the vicinity of objects in front of them demonstrating that they have some control of their arms and indicating that they perceive objects as such. Another example is the rapid onset of smooth-pursuit eye movements during the second month of life and the emerging ability to predict when and where an occluded moving object will reappear. At 4months of age, out of sight is no longer of mind. The child's sensorimotor system is especially designed to facilitate the extraction of knowledge about the world including other people. In addition, the infant is endowed with motives that ensure that the innate predispositions are transformed into a system of knowledge for guiding actions predictively. By perceiving and acting on the world, infants develop their cognition and through developmental studies; we can learn more about these processes.