Date Presented 04/05/19
The purpose of this presentation is to present findings from a study of precrawling infants as they learned to drive a robotic mobility device, and to relate these findings to dynamic systems theory. Thelen (2005) argues that developmental change occurs with the organization of many individual elements within the infant and the environment. In this study, the infant’s intentional movement increased as nonintentional movement decreased over mobility sessions, demonstrating self-organization.
Primary Author and Speaker: McKenna Pols
Additional Authors and Speakers: Hana Motoki, Sarah O'Hagen, Carole Dennis
PURPOSE: Thelen (2005) approached dynamic systems theory from the view of chaos theory, where “physical and biological systems . . .appear to self-organize to produce ordered patterns” (Thelen, 2005, p. 260). She described infant development as dynamic, in that the state of performance at any one time is contingent upon past and current states. In typical development, we tend to see infant development fall into familiar patterns that we may refer to as milestones. Thelen’s perspective is that these patterns develop because neurotypical infants have similar resources available to them within the constraints of the infant body, and the patterns that develop are very similar among children. In children who are not developing typically, we identify problems in the acquisition of milestones, perhaps without considering that the resources available to these infants may be different than those available to typically-developing infants, resulting in different movement patterns. Thelen has challenged the traditional views of motor development and offers a contemporary understanding of the intersection between learning, development, and therapeutic intervention. This intersection, achieved through a heterarchical relationship, facilitates developmental change in young infants through integration of motor behavior and knowledge from the environment (Smith, 2006). The merger of these three components leads to a phenomenon that Thelen identified as the developmental cascade; infant development of new schemes of movement leads to greater opportunities within the environment, prompting further development. The purpose of this study is to describe how infants acquire driving skills using the WeeBot, a robotic mobility device controlled by weight shift.
DESIGN: This study uses a quasi-experimental design to examine changes in intentionality of driving behaviors in 30 pre-crawling, neurotypical infants (verified with the Bayley III). Infants were recruited through on-line postings. Parents received a $25.00 stipend for each session.
METHOD: Five-month-old pre-crawling, typically-developing infants (n=30) participated in 12 play sessions over a 2-month period designed to stimulate independent movement via the WeeBot. Sessions were 16 minutes long; 10 minutes were devoted to training infants to drive, and 6 minutes were allocated for 2, 3-minute free play sessions. We used ELAN annotation software to code infant movement behaviors. We used a paired-samples t-test to compare infant intentional goal directed movement, goal directed reaching towards objects in the environment, and non-intentional movements of the robot in the first three sessions to the last three sessions during free play periods. We hypothesized that over the course of 12 sessions, intentional movement would increase while non-intentional movement will decrease.
RESULTS: As hypothesized, infants time spent in intentional goal-directed movement increased significantly from early sessions to later sessions (p<.01). Similarly, time spent moving non-intentionally decreased significantly (p<.01).
CONCLUSION: Access to early mobility opportunities provided by the WeeBot results in increased voluntary, intentional movement as illustrated by Thelen (2005) in her dynamical systems theory. Results of the current study show that infants increased intentionality in their movement during free play sessions. This was observed via increased integration and organization of their environment as they moved with the goal of reaching objects and people in their environment. These findings can be applied in therapeutic practice to provide mobility opportunities for young infants in attempts to explore, interact with, and learn from the physical and social environment.
References
Bayley, N. (2006). Bayley scales of infant and toddler development (3rd ed.). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt.
Smith, L. B. (2006). Movement Matters: The Contributions of Esther Thelen. Biological Theory: Integrating Development, Evolution, and Cognition, 1(1), 87–89. https://doi.org/10.1162/biot.2
Thelen, E. (2005). Dynamic systems theory and the complexity of change. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 15, 255-283. doi:10.1007/s10615-012-0403-4
Wittenburg, P., Brugman, H., Russel, A., Klassmann, A., & Sloetjes, H. (2006, May-26). ELAN: a Professional Framework for Multimodality Research. Proceedings of LREC 2006, Fifth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation. Retrieved from: http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2006/
