Cognitive Development

Adaptive locomotion involves more than muscles and biomechanics. Learning to safely navigate the everyday environment requires higher-level cognitive processes such as means/ends exploration, problem solving, spatial reasoning, and tool use. We challenge infants with potentially risky situations and observe how they discover alternative strategies to reach their goal. For example, when faced with descending steep slopes and stairs, older crawling and walking infants test various alternative means of descent until finding an appropriate sliding position; younger infants remain stuck on the starting platform. In current work on means/ends exploration, we are examining how infants acquire a "backing strategy" where they initiate a detour to descend backward feet first down slopes, stairs, and pedestals. In our tool-use studies, walking infants are encouraged to cross a bridge over a precipice. Experienced walking infants quickly discovered that they could use a handrail as a tool to augment their balance on narrow bridges. Moreover, they understood that the spatial proximity (near versus far from the bridge) and composition of the handrail (wobbly versus wood) affects its utility as a tool by inventing new strategies (akin to mountain climbing or rappelling) for crossing bridges with only a far or wobbly handrail for aid.