Is Visually Guided Reaching in Early Infancy a Myth?

Abstract

The issue examined was whether infants require sight of their hand when first beginning to reach for, contact, and grasp objects. 7 infants were repeatedly tested between 6 and 25 weeks of age. Each session consisted of 8 trials of objects presented in the light and 8 trials of glowing or sounding objects in complete darkness. Infants first contacted the object in both conditions at comparable ages (mean age for light, 12.3 weeks, and for dark, 11.9 weeks). Infants first grasped the object in the light at 16.0 weeks and in the dark at 14.7 weeks, a nonsignificant difference. Once contact was observed, infants continued to touch and grasp the objects in both light and dark throughout all sessions. Because infants could not see their hand or arm in the dark, their early success in contacting the glowing and sounding objects indicates that proprioceptive cues, not sight of the limb, guided their early reaching. Reaching in the light developed in parallel with reaching in the dark, suggesting that visual guidance of the hand is not necessary to achieve object contact either at the onset of successful reaching or in the succeeding weeks.

Haptic grasping configurations in early infancy reveal different developmental profiles for visual guidance of the Reach versus the Grasp

“…The present results are in agreement with a number of previous studies (Berthier and Carrico 2010;Carrico and Berthier 2008;Clifton et al 1993;Fagard 2000;Konczak and Dichgans 1997;Perris and Clifton 1988;Robin et al 1996;and Corbetta and Snapp-Childs 2009;Schum et al 2011) in suggesting that touch contributes to the early development of the Reach and the Grasp and that visual guidance of these movements continues to develop into early childhood. The present results also extend this work in a number of ways.…”

Learning to reach with “sticky” or “non-sticky” mittens: A tale of developmental trajectories

“…This was revolutionary to the field of motor development but contemporary research has not fully supported all aspects of Piaget's theory (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000;Clifton et al, 1993;McCarty, Clifton, Ashmead, Lee, & Goubet, 2001;Meltzoff & Moore, 1977;Pogetti, Souza, Tudella, & Teixeira, 2013;Slater, Quinn, Brown, & Hayes, 1999;Streri & Gentaz, 2003). As of today, it is still not clear how infants exactly figure out how to coordinate their bodies, actions, and intentions to manage the first successful contact with an object, and repeat this action over time, although accounts on how this may come about have been suggested (see Corbetta, Thurman, Wiener, Guan, & Williams, 2014;Piaget, 1952;White et al, 1964, for past and more current accounts).…”

“…The ability to reach for objects in the environment is a critical motor skill that emerges around 3-5 months of age (Clifton, Muir, Ashmead, & Clarkson, 1993;Thelen, Corbetta, & Spencer, 1996;von Hofsten, 1984;White, Castle, & Held, 1964). The emergence of this behavior has been shown to significantly impact infants' future interactions within their surroundings.…”

Fast Learning Mapping Schemes for Robotic Hand–Eye Coordination

“…This occurs up to 3-5 months of age and is often referred to as pre-reaching [16]. Thereafter, it is considered that infants have a 'unified coding system within which visual, auditory and proprioceptive stimulation is integrated' to facilitate the reach process [6]. What appears to be important about this transition from inaccurate to accurate reaching is that it is not dependent on visual guidance and that after visual or even auditory location of the target, proprioceptive information about hand position is sufficient to attain an accurate reaching action [6].…”

“…Thereafter, it is considered that infants have a 'unified coding system within which visual, auditory and proprioceptive stimulation is integrated' to facilitate the reach process [6]. What appears to be important about this transition from inaccurate to accurate reaching is that it is not dependent on visual guidance and that after visual or even auditory location of the target, proprioceptive information about hand position is sufficient to attain an accurate reaching action [6]. However, it is also known that the onset of reaching in blind infants in response to auditory cues is delayed (8-11 months compared to 3-4 months in sighted infants) [7], which may suggest that there is a predominant role of vision in the initial development of a common mapping system between modalities.…”