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Controlling posture to see the world: The integration of visual task demands and postural sway in sitting and
Hanh M Pham1, Elise J Leung1, Jennifer M King1
1Department of Health and Kinesiology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
Insights
Infants adjust their body sway to focus on visual tasks, with standing infants showing more sway than sitting infants. Both groups adapt sway area based on image size, demonstrating early motor control development.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Motor control
- Infant behavior
Background:
- Integrating posture with visual tasks is key for motor flexibility.
- Infants must learn to control body sway to focus on visual stimuli.
- Understanding infant motor development informs our knowledge of complex behaviors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if infants adjust postural sway during visually demanding tasks.
- To compare postural control strategies between sitting and standing infants.
- To determine how image size influences infant postural adjustments.
Main Methods:
- 19 sitting and 21 standing infants participated.
- Infants stood or sat on a force plate.
- Postural sway was measured while viewing images of different sizes.
Main Results:
- Standing infants exhibited greater sway area and velocity than sitting infants.
- Both groups adjusted sway area, but not sway velocity, based on image size.
- Standing infants, unlike sitting infants, altered sway dynamics with image size changes.
Conclusions:
- Infants employ posture-specific strategies to adapt postural sway to visual demands.
- This ability highlights the development of complex motor behaviors in infancy.
- Infants can flexibly attend to environmental stimuli across different postural states.
Abstract:
Our ability to integrate posture with visually demanding tasks is a critical aspect of motor behavior flexibility. When looking at a small object, excessive body movements impair an individual's ability to visually attend to the object. To overcome this problem, we adjust our postural sway to successfully focus on the object. The goal of the current study was to assess whether infants also adjust postural sway when engaged in a challenging visual task. The participants, 19 independently sitting infants (Sitters) and 21 newly independently standing infants (Standers), sat or stood on a force plate while viewing differently sized images displayed on a monitor (smaller images: 8 × 6.5 cm or 3 × 3 cm; larger images: 13 × 16 cm or 13 × 13 cm). Regardless of image size, Standers were less stable than Sitters with larger sway areas and faster sway velocities. Both Sitters and Standers adjusted sway area but not sway velocity, based on image size. Sitters and Standers differed in how they controlled sway dynamics. Standers but not Sitters altered sway dynamics based on image size. Overall, infants used posture-specific adaptive control strategies to make fine-grained adjustments based on image size. The development of the ability to integrate posture with a visually demanding task further emphasizes the capability of advanced complex motor behaviors during infancy, enabling infants to flexibly attend to important aspects of their environment at different postural positions.
