Systems in Development: Motor Skill Acquisition Facilitates 3D Object Completion

摘要

How do infants learn to perceive the backs of objects that they see only from a limited viewpoint? Infants’ 3D object completion abilities emerge in conjunction with developing motor skills—independent sitting and visual-manual exploration. Twenty-eight 4.5- to 7.5-month-old infants were habituated to a limited-view object and tested with volumetrically complete and incomplete (hollow) versions of the same object. Parents reported infants’ sitting experience, and infants’ visual-manual exploration of objects was observed in a structured play session. Infants’ self-sitting experience and visual-manual exploratory skills predicted looking to the novel, incomplete object on the habituation task. Further analyses revealed that self-sitting facilitated infants’ visual inspection of objects while they manipulated them. The results are framed within a developmental systems approach, wherein infants’ sitting skill, multimodal object exploration, and object knowledge are linked in developmental time.