Online reach correction in 6-and 11-month-old infants

The current study investigated the development of online reach control. Six- and 11-month-old infants reached for a toy while their hand position was tracked. The toy either remained stationary (baseline trials) or unexpectedly displaced left- or rightward during the reach (perturbation trials). To obtain a measure of online reach correction, we compared reaches in the perturbation trials to reaches in baseline trials using autoregression analysis. Infants of both age groups adjusted their reach trajectories in the direction of the displacement. Moreover, we divided the reaching movements into movement units, defined as the submovements of a reach between local minima in hand speed. Eleven-month-old infants adjusted their reach within the span of a single movement unit; corrections in 6-month-olds spanned multiple movement units. These results suggest that the reach control system has a rudimentary replanning capacity by 6 months of age, which, with age, further develops to a more sophisticated online control mechanism for ongoing reaches.

Automated summary

The study examined the development of online reach control in infants aged six and eleven months. Infants reached for a toy while their hand position was tracked, and the toy was either stationary or unexpectedly displaced during the reach. The results showed that both age groups adjusted their reaching movements in the direction of the displacement, but the 11-month-old infants made adjustments within a single movement unit while the 6-month-olds required multiple movement units. This suggests that the reach control system develops a rudimentary replanning capacity by 6 months of age, which further develops into a more sophisticated mechanism by 11 months.