Means-end problem solving in infancy: Development, emergence of intentionality, and transfer of knowledge

The impact of severity of motor delay, timing of task mastery, and START-play intervention on the development of means-end problem solving in young children

BACKGROUND

Children with motor delays are at increased risk for delayed means-end problem-solving (MEPS) performance.

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate children with motor delays: 1) the impact of motor delay severity and MEPS mastery timing on developmental trajectories of MEPS; and 2) the effectiveness of Sitting Together And Reaching To Play (START-Play) intervention for improving MEPS.

METHODS

This represents a secondary analysis from a multi-site randomized controlled trial, with blinded assessors and prospective registration. Children with mild or significant motor delays (n = 112, mean age=10.80, SD=2.59 months at baseline) were randomly assigned to START-Play or usual care early intervention (UC-EI) and assessed at five visits across one year using the Means-End Problem-Solving Assessment Tool that included three 30-second MEPS trials per visit. Task mastery occurred at the first visit the child achieved the highest level of performance in at least two of the three trials. Multilevel analyses evaluated trajectories of MEPS outcomes dependent upon the timing of MEPS mastery, motor delay severity, and intervention group.

RESULTS

At baseline, children with mild motor delays demonstrated better MEPS than children with significant delays, but this difference was only observed for children who achieved mastery late. Children with significant delays demonstrated greater improvements in MEPS in the post-intervention phase compared to children with mild delays. No MEPS differences were found between START-Play and UC-EI.

CONCLUSION

Motor delay severity and timing of task mastery impacted MEPS trajectories, whereas START-Play intervention did not impact MEPS for children with motor delays.

CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRY IDENTIFIER

NCT02593825 (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02593825).

Biological and environmental factors may affect children's executive function through motor and sensorimotor development: Preterm birth and cerebral palsy

Disruptive biological and environmental factors may undermine the development of children's motor and sensorimotor skills. Since the development of cognitive skills, including executive function, is grounded in early motor and sensorimotor experiences, early delays or impairments in motor and sensorimotor processing often trigger dynamic developmental cascades that lead to suboptimal executive function outcomes. The purpose of this perspective paper is to link early differences in motor/sensorimotor processing to the development of executive function in children born preterm or with cerebral palsy. Uncovering such links in clinical populations would improve our understanding of developmental pathways and key motor and sensorimotor skills that are antecedent and foundational for the development of executive function. This knowledge will allow the refinement of early interventions targeting motor and sensorimotor skills with the goal of proactively improving executive function outcomes in at-risk populations.

A model for using developmental science to create effective early intervention programs and technologies to improve children's developmental outcomes

Children born with a variety of environmental or medical risk factors may exhibit delays in global development. Very often, such delays are identified at preschool or school age, when children are severely overdue for effective early interventions that can alleviate the delays. This chapter proposes a conceptual model of child development to inform the creation of interventions and rehabilitative technologies that can be provided very early in development, throughout the first year of life, to optimize children's future developmental outcomes. The model suggests that early sensorimotor skills are antecedent and foundational for future motor, cognitive, language, and social development. As an example, this chapter describes how children's early postural control and exploratory movements facilitate the development of future object exploration behaviors that provide enhanced opportunities for learning and advance children's motor, cognitive, language, and social development. An understanding of the developmental pathways in the model can enable the design of effective intervention programs and rehabilitative technologies that target sensorimotor skills in the first year of life with the goal of minimizing or ameliorating the delays that are typically identified at preschool or school age. Specific examples of early interventions and rehabilitative technologies that have effectively advanced children's motor and cognitive development by targeting early sensorimotor skills and behaviors are provided.

From Hemispheric Asymmetry through Sensorimotor Experiences to Cognitive Outcomes in Children with Cerebral Palsy

Recent neuroimaging studies allowed us to explore abnormal brain structures and interhemispheric connectivity in children with cerebral palsy (CP). Behavioral researchers have long reported that children with CP exhibit suboptimal performance in different cognitive domains (e.g., receptive and expressive language skills, reading, mental imagery, spatial processing, subitizing, math, and executive functions). However, there has been very limited cross-domain research involving these two areas of scientific inquiry. To stimulate such research, this perspective paper proposes some possible neurological mechanisms involved in the cognitive delays and impairments in children with CP. Additionally, the paper examines the ways motor and sensorimotor experience during the development of these neural substrates could enable more optimal development for children with CP. Understanding these developmental mechanisms could guide more effective interventions to promote the development of both sensorimotor and cognitive skills in children with CP.

A New Look at Infant Problem-Solving: Using DeepLabCut to Investigate Exploratory Problem-Solving Approaches

When confronted with novel problems, problem-solvers must decide whether to copy a modeled solution or to explore their own unique solutions. While past work has established that infants can learn to solve problems both through their own exploration and through imitation, little work has explored the factors that influence which of these approaches infants select to solve a given problem. Moreover, past work has treated imitation and exploration as qualitatively distinct, although these two possibilities may exist along a continuum. Here, we apply a program novel to developmental psychology (DeepLabCut) to archival data (Lucca et al., 2020) to investigate the influence of the effort and success of an adult's modeled solution, and infants' firsthand experience with failure, on infants' imitative versus exploratory problem-solving approaches. Our results reveal that tendencies toward exploration are relatively immune to the information from the adult model, but that exploration generally increased in response to firsthand experience with failure. In addition, we found that increases in maximum force and decreases in trying time were associated with greater exploration, and that exploration subsequently predicted problem-solving success on a new iteration of the task. Thus, our results demonstrate that infants increase exploration in response to failure and that exploration may operate in a larger motivational framework with force, trying time, and expectations of task success.

A Novel Means-End Problem-Solving Assessment Tool for Early Intervention: Evaluation of Validity, Reliability, and Sensitivity

PURPOSE

To evaluate validity, reliability, and sensitivity of the novel Means-End Problem-Solving Assessment Tool (MEPSAT).

METHODS

Children with typical development and those with motor delay were assessed throughout the first 2 years of life using the MEPSAT. MEPSAT scores were validated against the cognitive and motor subscales of the Bayley Scales of Development. Intra- and interrater reliability, developmental trends, and differences among groups were evaluated.

RESULTS

Changes in MEPSAT scores positively related to changes in Bayley scores across time for both groups of children. Strong intra- and interrater reliability was observed for MEPSAT scoring across all children. The MEPSAT was sensitive to identify change across time and differences in problem-solving among children with varying levels of motor delay.

CONCLUSIONS

The MEPSAT is supported by validity and reliability evidence and is a simple tool for screening early problem-solving delays and evaluating change across time in children with a range of developmental abilities. What this adds to the evidence: The novel MEPSAT is supported by validity and reliability evidence. It is sensitive to detect problem-solving differences among young children with varying motor ability and to capture changes in problem-solving across time. It requires minimal equipment and time to administer and score and, thus, is a promising tool for clinicians to screen for early problem-solving delays or to track intervention progress in young children with or at risk for problem-solving delays.

Sensorimotor Contingencies as a Key Drive of Development: From Babies to Robots

Much current work in robotics focuses on the development of robots capable of autonomous unsupervised learning. An essential prerequisite for such learning to be possible is that the agent should be sensitive to the link between its actions and the consequences of its actions, called sensorimotor contingencies. This sensitivity, and more particularly its role as a key drive of development, has been widely studied by developmental psychologists. However, the results of these studies may not necessarily be accessible or intelligible to roboticians. In this paper, we review the main experimental data demonstrating the role of sensitivity to sensorimotor contingencies in infants' acquisition of four fundamental motor and cognitive abilities: body knowledge, memory, generalization, and goal-directedness. We relate this data from developmental psychology to work in robotics, highlighting the links between these two domains of research. In the last part of the article we present a blueprint architecture demonstrating how exploitation of sensitivity to sensorimotor contingencies, combined with the notion of "goal," allows an agent to develop new sensorimotor skills. This architecture can be used to guide the design of specific computational models, and also to possibly envisage new empirical experiments.