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Tactile training facilitates infants' ability to reach to targets on the body |
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| Authors: | Eszter Somogyi Mollie Hamilton Lisa K Chinn Lisa Jacquey Tobias Heed Matej Hoffmann Jeffrey J Lockman Jacqueline Fagard J Kevin O'Regan |
| Institution: | 1. Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center, CNRS UMR 8002, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France;2. Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA;3. ULR 4072 – PSITEC – Psychologie : Interactions, Temps, Emotions, Cognition, University of Lille, Lille, France;4. Department of Psychology and Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria;5. Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic;6. Department of Psychology, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA |
| Abstract: | This longitudinal study investigated the effect of experience with tactile stimulation on infants' ability to reach to targets on the body, an important adaptive skill. Infants were provided weekly tactile stimulation on eight body locations from 4 to 8 months of age (N = 11), comparing their ability to reach to the body to infants in a control group who did not receive stimulation (N = 10). Infants who received stimulation were more likely to successfully reach targets on the body than controls by 7 months of age. These findings indicate that tactile stimulation facilitates the development of reaching to the body by allowing infants to explore the sensorimotor correlations emerging from the stimulation. |
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