It's the journey, not the destination: Locomotor exploration in infants

Abstract

What incites infant locomotion? Recent research suggests that locomotor exploration is not primarily directed toward distant people, places, or things. However, this question has not been addressed experimentally. In the current study, we asked whether a room filled with toys designed to encourage locomotion (stroller, ball, etc.) elicits different quantities or patterns of exploration than a room with no toys. Caregivers were present but did not interact with infants. Although most walking bouts in the toy-filled room involved toys, to our surprise, 15-month-olds in both rooms produced the same quantity of locomotion. This finding suggests that mere space to move is sufficient to elicit locomotion. However, infants' patterns of locomotor exploration differed: Infants in the toy-filled room spent a smaller percent of the session within arms' reach of their caregiver and explored more locations in the room. Real-time analyses show that infants in the toy-filled room took an increasing number of steps per bout and covered more area as the session continued, whereas infants in the no-toy room took fewer and fewer steps per bout and traveled repeatedly over the same ground. Although not required to elicit locomotion, moving with toys encouraged infants to travel farther from their caregivers and to explore new areas.

Keywords: exploration; gross motor play; infant locomotion; peragration; walking.

Figure 1.

Locomotor play in an empty room. (A) An infant rhesus monkey climbed up a wall to reach a protuberance in an otherwise empty chamber (Mears, 1978). (B) A human infant in the no-toy room stretched his fingertips to the top edge of a board obscuring an apparatus and hung suspended by his arms, with legs climbing spider-like up the wall.

Figure 2.

Playroom in the toy condition. The no-toy playroom was equivalent, but no toys were present. Caregivers sat at the edge of the room completing a questionnaire. An experimenter filmed infants from a distance. Neither adult interacted with infants.

Figure 3.

No differences in quantity of locomotion in the toy-filled room versus the no-toy room in: (A) percent of time in motion, (B) number of steps per hour, (C) meters traveled per hour, (D) bouts per hour, (E) number of steps per bout, and (F) meters traveled per bout. Open circles plot infants in toy and no-toy conditions. Filled circles show infants in the follow up conditions with toys piled in one place (red) and caregiver moved to a different location (blue). Data from these infants are not included in the group means (horizontal black bars).

Figure 4.

Locomotor paths for each infant in (A) the toy condition and (B) the no-toy condition derived from the novel digitizing technique. Paths are ordered from most to least area covered (maximum area possible 29 m²).

Figure 5.

Infants in the toy condition (A) explored a greater percent of the room and (B) spent a lower percent of the session within 100 cm of the caregiver. Open circles plot infants in toy and no-toy conditions. Filled circles show infants in the follow up conditions (toys-piled in red and mom-moved in blue) and are not included in the group means (horizontal black bars). Asterisks denote statistical significance.

Figure 6.

Heat maps showing the average number of seconds spent in each location in the playroom (estimated as a 15-cm radius circle centered on the left foot) at 5, 10, 15 and 20 minutes into the session. Infants in the toy-filled room (A) covered more area and continued to visit new locations over time. (B) Infants in the no-toy room spent more time near their caregivers (the dark red patches at the top of each map) and visited new room locations at a slower rate. Note that time in each location is displayed on a logarithmic scale with the highest value 10000 times the lowest value.