The little spontaneous movements that babies make do have a purpose. This would be a first step towards learning movements, according to a recent Japanese study.
Legs pedaling in the void, arms suddenly outstretched… These repetitive and spontaneous movements of infants have long remained a mystery. Research had assumed that they had a usefulness in the development of the child, but without really understanding their role until now. A team from the University of Tokyo in Japan has noticed that these gestures – which seem disorganized – nevertheless play a role in the motor and sensory development of the baby.
“It is difficult to know if a movement is conscious or not. We know that from birth, certain movements have a voluntary origin, especially when a baby observes something.“, explains Professor Hoshi Kanazawa, who publishes his analysis in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “We wanted to observe how children try to move and how they can feel things.”
His team first monitored joint movement in 12 newborn babies under 10 days old and 10 three-month-old children. They also used musculoskeletal models to estimate muscle movement and motor and sensory development. Finally, they observed the direct correlations between these two data to observe sensorimotor movements.
Each baby develops their own range of movements
Result: children all develop their own “patterns“of movements to try to discover their environment, guided by their curiosity.”Infants seem to seek new sensory and motor experiences. At three months, the gestures they used to make change, which might be due to the search for new sensations and new movements.“Curiosity seems to be an important component, from this young age, in trying to move and feel things.
“We have noticed that babies, rather than infants, generate muscle activity at the […]
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