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Strike a Pose: Relationships Between Infants' Motor Development and Visuospatial Representations of Bodies
Emma L Axelsson1, Tayla Britton1, Gurmeher K Gulhati1
1School of Psychological Sciences, College of Engineering, Science and Environment, University of Newcastle Australia, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia.
Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland)
|August 28, 2025
Summary
Infants can distinguish body postures, with attention drawn to heads. Motor development influences how infants perceive upright versus inverted body representations.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Human Perception
Background:
- Infants recognize faces early, but body posture discrimination shows inconsistent results.
- Previous research lacks clarity on how infants process body information.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate 7- and 9-month-old infants' ability to discriminate body postures.
- To examine the influence of orientation, head presence, and motor development on body perception.
- To understand the development of configural body representations in infancy.
Main Methods:
- Familiarisation-novelty preference procedure with eye-tracking.
- Presentation of upright and inverted headless and whole body postures.
- Correlations between motor skill development (gross and fine) and posture discrimination.
Main Results:
- Infants focused longest on upright headless bodies and heads in whole figures, indicating heads capture attention.
- Discrimination was challenging with similar limb positions and short trials.
- Longer trials revealed familiarity preference (7-month-olds) and novelty preference (9-month-olds) for upright figures.
- Gross motor skills correlated with better discrimination of upright versus inverted headless postures in 7-month-olds.
- Lower motor skills in 9-month-olds associated with preference for inverted over upright whole figures.
Conclusions:
- Infants form configural body representations, but perception is influenced by an 'upper bias' (heads/feet).
- Item similarity and trial duration significantly impact discrimination abilities.
- Motor development plays a differential role in how infants represent body postures.
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