Sarah E Berger
Biographic Data
| ID | 5758100 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah E Berger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah E |
| FAMILY NAME | Berger |
| SIGNATURE | BERGER S E |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Graduate Center, CUNY |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2794-5517 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Three decades of infant motor development: Cohort effects in motor skill onsets
Infant motor development is affected by the sociocultural context in which it takes place. Because societal and cultural practices are dynamic, this exploratory study examined whether the ages at which infants typically learned to crawl, cruise, and walk changed over the past 3 decades. We compiled archival data from 1,306 infants born between January 31, 1992, and December 10, 2021. Parents originally reported milestone onsets in interviews and …
Real-time teaching and learning: Caregivers teaching infants to descend stairs
Learning to descend stairs requires motor and cognitive capacities on the part of infants and opportunities for practice and assurance of safety offered by caregivers. The American Academy of Pediatrics prescribes the age strategy to teach toddlers to safely descend stairs but without much consideration for individual differences in infants' skills or caregivers' techniques. The purpose of this study was to observe the natural ways in which careg…
Infant motor development predicts the dynamics of movement during sleep
The characteristics of infant sleep change over the first year. Generally, infants wake and move less at night as they grow older. However, acquisition of new motor skills leads to temporary increases in night waking and movement at night. Indeed, sleep‐dependent movement at night is important for sensorimotor development. Nevertheless, little is known about how movement during sleep changes as infants accrue locomotor experience. The current stu…
The Trajectory of Concurrent Motor and Vocal Behaviors Over the Transition to Crawling in Infancy
To document the trajectory of motor and vocal behaviors in real and developmental time, we observed infants at each of four biweekly naturalistic play sessions over the transition to crawling. An exhaustive and mutually exclusive coding scheme documented all vocalizations and postures. Odds ratios of the likelihood of a given posture‐vocalization dyad revealed that vocalization and crawling were significantly unlikely to co‐occur at the session m…
What Cruising Infants Understand about Support for Locomotion
“Cruising” infants can only walk using external support to augment their balance. We examined cruisers' understanding of support for upright locomotion under four conditions: cruising over a wooden handrail at chest height, a large gap in the handrail, a wobbly unstable handrail, and an ill‐positioned low handrail. Infants distinguished among the support properties of the handrails with differential attempts to cruise and handrail‐specific forms …
Strength of Infants' Bimanual Reaching Patterns is Related to the Onset of Upright Locomotion
Infants typically exhibit a shift from unimanual to bimanual reaching toward the end of their first year, which has been linked to walking onset. Until now, however, it has been unclear whether it was the onset of walking per se that influenced reaching patterns or whether a more general shift to an upright posture might have prompted the reorganization of the motor system. To address this question, the current study longitudinally chronicled the…
Locomotor expertise predicts infants’ perseverative errors
This research examined the development of inhibition in a locomotor context. In a within-subjects design, infants received high- and low-demand locomotor A-not-B tasks. In Experiment 1, walking 13-month-old infants followed an indirect path to a goal. In a control condition, infants took a direct route. In Experiment 2, crawling and walking 13-month-old infants crawled through a tunnel to reach a goal at the other end and received the same contro…
Demands on Finite Cognitive Capacity Cause Infants' Perseverative Errors
This research unites traditionally disparate developmental domains—cognition and locomotion—to examine the classic cognitive issue of the development of inhibition in infancy. In 2 locomotor A‐not‐B tasks, 13‐month‐old walking infants inhibited a prepotent response under low task demands (walking on flat ground), but perseverated under increased task demands (descending a staircase). Despite elimination of factors previously associated with infan…
Infants use handrails as tools in a locomotor task
In 2 experiments the authors demonstrated that adaptive locomotion can involve means-ends problem solving. Sixteen-month-old toddlers crossed bridges of varying widths in the presence or absence of a handrail. Babies attempted wider bridges more often than narrow ones, and attempts on narrow bridges depended on handrail presence. Toddlers had longer latencies, examined the bridge and handrail more closely, and modified their gait when bridges wer…
Infants use handrails as tools in a locomotor task
In 2 experiments the authors demonstrated that adaptive locomotion can involve means-ends problem solving. Sixteen-month-old toddlers crossed bridges of varying widths in the presence or absence of a handrail. Babies attempted wider bridges more often than narrow ones, and attempts on narrow bridges depended on handrail presence. Toddlers had longer latencies, examined the bridge and handrail more closely, and modified their gait when bridges wer…
Three decades of infant motor development: Cohort effects in motor skill onsets
Infant motor development is affected by the sociocultural context in which it takes place. Because societal and cultural practices are dynamic, this exploratory study examined whether the ages at which infants typically learned to crawl, cruise, and walk changed over the past 3 decades. We compiled archival data from 1,306 infants born between January 31, 1992, and December 10, 2021. Parents originally reported milestone onsets in interviews and …
Locomotor expertise predicts infants’ perseverative errors
This research examined the development of inhibition in a locomotor context. In a within-subjects design, infants received high- and low-demand locomotor A-not-B tasks. In Experiment 1, walking 13-month-old infants followed an indirect path to a goal. In a control condition, infants took a direct route. In Experiment 2, crawling and walking 13-month-old infants crawled through a tunnel to reach a goal at the other end and received the same contro…
Infants use handrails as tools in a locomotor task
In 2 experiments the authors demonstrated that adaptive locomotion can involve means-ends problem solving. Sixteen-month-old toddlers crossed bridges of varying widths in the presence or absence of a handrail. Babies attempted wider bridges more often than narrow ones, and attempts on narrow bridges depended on handrail presence. Toddlers had longer latencies, examined the bridge and handrail more closely, and modified their gait when bridges wer…
Demands on Finite Cognitive Capacity Cause Infants' Perseverative Errors
This research unites traditionally disparate developmental domains—cognition and locomotion—to examine the classic cognitive issue of the development of inhibition in infancy. In 2 locomotor A‐not‐B tasks, 13‐month‐old walking infants inhibited a prepotent response under low task demands (walking on flat ground), but perseverated under increased task demands (descending a staircase). Despite elimination of factors previously associated with infan…
Locomotor expertise predicts infants’ perseverative errors
This research examined the development of inhibition in a locomotor context. In a within-subjects design, infants received high- and low-demand locomotor A-not-B tasks. In Experiment 1, walking 13-month-old infants followed an indirect path to a goal. In a control condition, infants took a direct route. In Experiment 2, crawling and walking 13-month-old infants crawled through a tunnel to reach a goal at the other end and received the same contro…
What Cruising Infants Understand about Support for Locomotion
“Cruising” infants can only walk using external support to augment their balance. We examined cruisers' understanding of support for upright locomotion under four conditions: cruising over a wooden handrail at chest height, a large gap in the handrail, a wobbly unstable handrail, and an ill‐positioned low handrail. Infants distinguished among the support properties of the handrails with differential attempts to cruise and handrail‐specific forms …
Strength of Infants' Bimanual Reaching Patterns is Related to the Onset of Upright Locomotion
Infants typically exhibit a shift from unimanual to bimanual reaching toward the end of their first year, which has been linked to walking onset. Until now, however, it has been unclear whether it was the onset of walking per se that influenced reaching patterns or whether a more general shift to an upright posture might have prompted the reorganization of the motor system. To address this question, the current study longitudinally chronicled the…
The Trajectory of Concurrent Motor and Vocal Behaviors Over the Transition to Crawling in Infancy
To document the trajectory of motor and vocal behaviors in real and developmental time, we observed infants at each of four biweekly naturalistic play sessions over the transition to crawling. An exhaustive and mutually exclusive coding scheme documented all vocalizations and postures. Odds ratios of the likelihood of a given posture‐vocalization dyad revealed that vocalization and crawling were significantly unlikely to co‐occur at the session m…
Infant motor development predicts the dynamics of movement during sleep
The characteristics of infant sleep change over the first year. Generally, infants wake and move less at night as they grow older. However, acquisition of new motor skills leads to temporary increases in night waking and movement at night. Indeed, sleep‐dependent movement at night is important for sensorimotor development. Nevertheless, little is known about how movement during sleep changes as infants accrue locomotor experience. The current stu…
Three decades of infant motor development: Cohort effects in motor skill onsets
Infant motor development is affected by the sociocultural context in which it takes place. Because societal and cultural practices are dynamic, this exploratory study examined whether the ages at which infants typically learned to crawl, cruise, and walk changed over the past 3 decades. We compiled archival data from 1,306 infants born between January 31, 1992, and December 10, 2021. Parents originally reported milestone onsets in interviews and …
Real-time teaching and learning: Caregivers teaching infants to descend stairs
Learning to descend stairs requires motor and cognitive capacities on the part of infants and opportunities for practice and assurance of safety offered by caregivers. The American Academy of Pediatrics prescribes the age strategy to teach toddlers to safely descend stairs but without much consideration for individual differences in infants' skills or caregivers' techniques. The purpose of this study was to observe the natural ways in which careg…
Psychology (9 works) · Developmental psychology (8 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (7 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Infant Development and Preterm Care (6 works) · Motor skill (6 works) · Neuroscience (4 works) · Physical medicine and rehabilitation (4 works) · Cognitive psychology (3 works) · Crawling (3 works)