Infant sitting postural control appears robust across changes in surface context

Independent sitting requires the control of the involved body segments over the base of support using information obtained from the three sensory systems (visual, vestibular, and somatosensory). The contribution of somatosensory information in infant sitting has not been explored. To address this ga...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Somatosensory & motor research 2017-10, Vol.34 (4), p.265-272
Main Authors: Kokkoni, Elena, Haworth, Joshua L., Harbourne, Regina T., Stergiou, Nicholas, Kyvelidou, Anastasia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Development
posture
somatosensory
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Summary:Independent sitting requires the control of the involved body segments over the base of support using information obtained from the three sensory systems (visual, vestibular, and somatosensory). The contribution of somatosensory information in infant sitting has not been explored. To address this gap, we altered the context of the sitting support surface and examined the infants' immediate postural responses. Ten 7-month-old typically developing infants sat on compliant and firm surfaces in one session. Spatial, frequency, and temporal measures of postural control were obtained using center of pressure data. Our results suggest that infants' postural sway is not immediately affected by the different types of foam surface while sitting. It seems that mature sitter infants are able to adapt to different environmental constraints by disregarding the distorted somatosensory information from the support surface and relying more on their remaining senses (visual and vestibular) to control their sitting posture.
ISSN:0899-0220
1369-1651
DOI:10.1080/08990220.2018.1425676