Locomotor Expertise Predicts Infants' Perseverative Errors

• Published in: Developmental psychology Vol. 46; no. 2; pp. 326 - 336
• Main Author: Berger, Sarah E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Psychological Association 01.03.2010
• Subjects: Attention; Child Development - physiology; Cognitive Processes; Expertise; Female; Humans; Individuality; Infant; Infant Behavior; Infant Behavior - psychology; Infants; Inhibition; Learning - physiology; Locomotion - physiology; Male; New York; Persistence; Physical Activities; Reaction Time; Visual Perception - physiology; New York
• ISSN: 0012-1649; 1939-0599
• DOI: 10.1037/a0018285

This research examined the development of inhibition in a locomotor context. In a within-subjects design, infants received high- and low-demand locomotor A-not-B tasks. In Experiment 1, walking 13-month-old infants followed an indirect path to a goal. In a control condition, infants took a direct route. In Experiment 2, crawling and walking 13-month-old infants crawled through a tunnel to reach a goal at the other end and received the same control condition as in Experiment 1. In both experiments, perseverative errors occurred more often in the high-demand condition than in the low-demand condition. Moreover, in Experiment 2, walkers perseverated more than crawlers, and extent of perseveration was related to infants' locomotor experience. In Experiment 3, the authors addressed a possible confound in Experiment 2 between locomotor expertise and locomotor posture. Novice crawlers perseverated in the difficult tunnels condition, behaving more like novice walkers than expert crawlers. As predicted by a cognitive capacity account of infant perseveration, overtaxed attentional resources resulted in a cognition-action trade-off. Experts who found the task less motorically effortful than novices had more cognitive resources available for problem solving. (Contains 5 figures.)