Development of Cardiac and Behavioral Responses to a Three-Dimensional Toy Stimulation in One- to Six-Month-Old Infants

Concomitance between development of perceptual-motor behavior and cardiac-somatic association was evaluated in 1-6-month-old infants. The behavior was elicited by presenting 3-dimensional objects to 50 infants divided into 5 age groups. Each infant was presented with a sequence of 5 commercial toys...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child development 1980-12, Vol.51 (4), p.1187-1196
Main Authors: Pomerleau, Andrée, Malcuit, Gérard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acceleration
Age groups
Arousal
Child Development
Depth Perception
Electrocardiography
Female
Form Perception
Heart Rate
Humans
Infant
Infants
Male
Mental stimulation
Mothers
Motor activity
Motor Skills
Orientation
Prehension
Psychophysiology
Toys
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Summary:Concomitance between development of perceptual-motor behavior and cardiac-somatic association was evaluated in 1-6-month-old infants. The behavior was elicited by presenting 3-dimensional objects to 50 infants divided into 5 age groups. Each infant was presented with a sequence of 5 commercial toys on 2 immediately succeeding occasions. Each toy stimulation lasted 30 sec and was divided in 2 phases: distal and proximal to the infant. Cardiac responses during the distal phase (first 15 sec) differed as a function of maturing capability of infants to touch and grasp the toys when they subsequently became proximal (last 15 sec). In younger infants (aged 1-3 months), heart-rate (HR) response was consistently decelerative and indexed orienting and attention to the object. In older infants, HR response shifted to acceleration while they fixated the distal toys, before they could actually reach them. This difference in cardiac reaction was attributed to differing stages of perceptual-motor maturation which permit different transactions with external events: somatic activity (acceleration) or information-getting activity (deceleration).
ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
DOI:10.2307/1129560