Lauriane Rat-Fischer

Reflections on “Origins” of artist Helen Edwards

Infants’ motor, social and cognitive learning from age 0 to 2 – A brief review

Born in a highly social and physical world, an infant’s first two years of life are incredibly rich in terms of motor and cognitive learning capacities. 

From birth, infants continuously explore their surroundings – exploration which is mainly driven by “intrinsic motivation” (Gibson, 1988) – a form of curiosity to acquire new knowledge. Internal curiosity is soon livened up by other external stimulations, among which social support plays a crucial role. While newborns’ visual systems aren’t yet fully developed, their brains already process human faces at nearly adult level (Farzin et al, 2012), showing the prominent roles human faces and early interaction play in a baby’s world from birth.

Guided by the combination of intrinsic, social and other external stimulations, infants are provided with an ideal framework for learning. The first year is marked by novel motor behaviours. Infants’ first movements allow them to discover their own body (von Hofsten, 2007) and to learn progressively about the relationships between their own actions and the effects produced on the environment (Piaget, 1952). They develop intentional grasping after a few months (von Hofsten & Rönnqvist, 1988), soon accompanied by role-differentiated bimanual actions during object manipulations (Fagard & Pezé, 1997). During the second half of the first year, infants begin to show clearly intentional actions (Piaget, 1952). This is also the period where infants benefit more and more from social interactions, with the first simple object-directed imitations (Elsner, 2007) to more and more complex social learning of novel behaviours, which extends to the second year of life (Esseily et al, 2010). At this later stage, infants start expressing increasingly complex behaviours that involve an understanding of specific causal relations (Chen & Siegler, 2000). The most remarkable example perhaps is infants’ developing capacity to use tools as a means for retrieving out-of-reach items by the end of the 2nd year (Rat-Fischer et al, 2012).

The artwork: “Origins”

This artwork explores aspects of the innate relationship between infant, caregiver and environment, essential for the development of infants’ socio-cognitive and motor learning capacities as described above. The artist further enlarged the scenery and symbolism of the painting to the full area of research of the collaborating scientist, covering early development not only in human babies but also in babies of other “clever” species – here represented by the presence of corvid hatchlings. Several species from the corvid family are known to be highly social and explorative (Emery & Clayton, 2004), while they express fairly sophisticated and creative behaviours such as problem-solving, tool use and tool manufacture (Kenward et al, 2005). It is believed that both social and physical stimulation play a role in the development of such capacities in birds, as has also been shown in apes and human babies (Hayashi & Matsuzawa, 2003).

The egg shell around the mother and infant dyad symbolises both the protective space of the strong parent-child bond that begins in the womb (Lecanuet & Schaal, 1996) and deepens across development, and the importance of the research and of the human mind in witnessing, validating and enabling new understanding and insight.

References

Chen, Z., & Siegler, R. S. (2000). Across the great divide: bridging the gap between understanding of toddlers’ and older children’s thinking. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 65(2), i-vii, 1-96.

Elsner, B. (2007). Infants’ imitation of goal-directed actions: the role of movements and action effects. Acta Psychologia (Amst), 124(1), 44-59.

Emery, N. J. & Clayton, N. S. (2004). Comparing the complex cognition of birds and primates. In: Comparative Vertebrate Cognition: are Primates Superior to Non- primates? (Ed. by L. J. Rogers & G. Kaplan), pp. 3e55 New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.

Esseily, R., Nadel, J., & Fagard, J. (2010). Object retrieval through observational learning in 8- to 18-month-old infants. Infant Behavior & Development, 33(4), 695-699.

Fagard, J., & Pezé, A. (1997). Age Changes in Interlimb Coupling and the Development of Bimanual Coordination. Journal of Motor Behavior, 29(3), 199-208.

Farzin, F., Hou, C., Norcia, A. M. (2012). Piecing it together: Infants’ neural responses to face and object structure. Journal of Vision December, 12, 6. doi:10.1167/12.13.6

Gibson, E. J. (1988). Exploratory behavior in the development of perceiving, acting and the acquiring of knowledge. Annual Review of Psychology, 39, p 1-41.

Hayashi, M. & Matsuzawa, T. (2003). Cognitive development in object manipulation by infant chimpanzees. Animal Cognition, 6, 225-233.

Kenward, B, Rutz, C, Weir, A A S & Kacelnik, A (2005). Development of tool use in New Caledonian crows: inherited action patterns and social influence. Animal Behaviour, 72, 1329-1343.

Lecanuet, J-P., & Schaal, B. (1996). Fetal sensory competencies. European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, 68, 1–23.

Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children (M. Cook, Trans.). New York: Norton. (Original work published 1936).

Rat-Fischer, L., O’Regan, J. K., & Fagard, J. (2012). The Emergence of tool use during the second year of life. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 113(3), 440-446.

von Hofsten, C. (2007). Action in development. Developmental Science, 10 (1), 54-60.

von Hofsten, C., Rönnqvist, L. (1988). Preparation for grasping an object: a developmental study. Journal of Experimental Psycholology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 610-621.