Infants’ visual anticipation of object structure in grasp planning

The coordination between visual and manual domains is a cornerstone of learning in early development. If infants anticipate an object's physical characteristics prior to contact (i.e., from visual inspection), they could learn more about the physical world through visual observation only than if manual exploration is required. In this experiment, infants grasped a series of four round balls quite similar in size and overall shape, but different in structure. Two were composed of solid hard plastic (one transparent, one opaque) in a rigid structure, and two were composed of more flexible plastic in a nonrigid structure. This nonrigid structure afforded grasping using a precision grasp with fingertips extending inside the ball's outer edge. In contrast, the rigid balls could be grasped only by a full-hand power grasp (due to the relative sizes of ball and infants’ hands). The infants’ manual anticipations were assessed in their first reach for each ball, prior to their first contact with the ball. In addition, grasping and other exploratory behaviors were assessed after contact with the ball. Results from this study suggest that infants from 5 to 15 months of age incorporate visible information about an object's structure into their action on the object. This provides evidence that visuomotor connections are present as soon as infants start reaching for objects, allowing them to select the appropriate grasp for an object's structure, even if they are not always capable of executing a pickup of the object using this grasp. Further research should investigate the discrepancies between infants’ grasp planning and their grasp execution.