Babies on the Edge

"For each new phase of motor development, infants have to relearn how to keep themselves safe." 

This is the conclusion, reported in Scientific American Mind (November 2010), of Karen Adolph a developmental psychologist at New York University.  Adolph tested how infants judge risk by setting 12- and 18-month old infants at the top of an adjustable wooden "cliff" and having their mothers beckon them over the edge.  Babies who had been crawling for months generally did not go over the drop-offs that were too big for them, nor did babies who had been walking for a while.  But many babies who had just started walking marched straight over drop-offs beyond their capabilities — even the highest, most obvious, three-foot plunge. 

According to Adolph, this means that crawling infants do not learn to be afraid of heights.  Instead, they learn what their crawling bodies can do, and when their style of locomotion changes, they need practice to recalibrate how they perceive their abilities.

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