Infant Toddler Learning & Development Foundations

PERCEPTUAL AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
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mental health, and brain functioning
(Diamond 2007). In the case of perceptual
and motor behavior, Diamond
(2007) has observed that perception,
motor behavior, and cognition occur
in the context of culture, emotion,
social relationships, and experience,
which in turn influence physical and
mental health as well as overall brain
functioning. Bertenthal (1996) has
proposed that perception and motor
action are interrelated rather than
autonomous processes. They may be
best viewed as different components
of an action system. Common behaviors
such as reaching and turning
the head for visual tracking illustrate
the interrelatedness of the motor,
perceptual, cognitive, and social-emotional
domains in infant development.
Even as very young infants, children
are highly motivated to explore, gain
information, attend, and engage their
physical and social environments
(Gibson 1987). As Gibson (1988, 5)
explains: “We don’t simply see, we
look.” Research by Berthier (1996, 811)
indicates that “infant reaching is not
simply a neural program that is triggered
by the presence of a goal object,
but that infants match the kinematics
of their reaches to the task and their
goals.”
Perception and motor action play a
key role in children’s experiences and
psychological processes (Thelen 1995).
They also contribute to human psychological
development in general, since
ultimately “behavior is movement”
(Adolph and Berger 2005, 223), and
psychology can be defined as the study
of human behavior. It has been proposed
that infants’ use of social information
to guide their motor behavior
in physically challenging or unfamiliar
situations provides an excellent means
to study infant social cognition (Tamis-
LeMonda and Adolph 2005).
Perceptual Development
Infants’ perceptual skills are at work
during every waking moment. For
example, those skills can be observed
when an infant gazes into a caregiver’s
eyes or distinguishes between familiar
and unfamiliar people. Infants use
perception to distinguish features
of the environment, such as height,
depth, and color. “The human infant
is recognized today as ‘perceptually
competent’; determining just how the
senses function in infancy helps to
specify the perceptual world of babies”
(Bornstein 2005, 284). The ability to
perceive commonalities and differences
between objects is related to the cognitive
domain foundation of classification.
Infants explore objects differently
depending upon object features such
as weight, texture, sound, or rigidity
(Palmer 1989). Parents and professionals
may have observed young children
exploring a slope, such as a slide, by
touching it with their hands or feet
before they decide whether to slide
down it or not. Research by Adolph,
Eppler, and Gibson (1993) suggests
that learning plays a part in young
children’s decision making in physically
risky situations, such as navigating
slopes, and that exploratory behavior
may be a means to this learning.
Perception is also strongly related to
the social-emotional domain, such as
when young children perceive the
differences between various facial
expressions and come to understand
what they may mean.