They gave the infants experience at “reflex walking<\/strong>” which is a primitive instinct in babies which disappears around 12 weeks of age.<\/p>\n When held by an adult at a slightly forward angle, and with the soles of their feet touching a flat surface, the infants will reflexively walk by placing one foot in front of the other.<\/p>\n Psychologists at Lancaster University gave this “reflex walking” experience to one half of a group of 10 week old infants, who took an average of 23 steps in 3 minutes.<\/p>\n The other half of the group did not share in the experience of walking.<\/p>\n The researchers showed film of human figures walking and crawling to both groups of infants as they sat on their mothers’ laps in a dimly lit room.<\/p>\n They then measured how the infants responded to this visual information by recording electrical activity in their brains.<\/p>\n Only the brains of the infants who had experienced “reflex walking” were able to recognise the same movement in the film of figures walking.<\/p>\n Their response was more similar to that of older children learning to walk rather than babies from younger ages.<\/p>\n The group of infants who had not practised “reflex walking” did not show this more mature brain activity but they may have recognised filmed crawling movement.<\/p>\n Psychologist Professor Vincent Reid said the research in\u00a0Neuropsychologia\u00a0<\/em>showed a link between perceiving an action and carrying out that action even in early infancy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n “This result strongly suggests that experience refines the perception of biological motion during early infancy.<\/p>\n “The act of walking has therefore shifted the percept of biological motion for those infants who had experienced self produced stepping behaviour.<\/p>\n “This suggests that the limited period of experience \u2026 altered the infant’s perception of walking, indicating a link between action perception and action production in early infancy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Lancaster University press release: Ten-week-old babies can learn from practising walking months before they begin walking themselves say researchers. They gave the infants experience at “reflex walking” which… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,9],"tags":[78,42,93,511],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25356"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25473,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25356\/revisions\/25473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/babywithpacifier.jpg\")
Ten-week-old babies can learn from practising walking months before they begin walking themselves<\/strong> say researchers.<\/p>\n