Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2014 Dec 2;8(4):187-192.
doi: 10.1111/cdep.12085.

The Costs and Benefits of Development: The Transition From Crawling to Walking

Karen E Adolph  1 , Catherine S Tamis-LeMonda  1
Affiliations

The Costs and Benefits of Development: The Transition From Crawling to Walking

Karen E Adolph et al. Child Dev Perspect. .

Abstract

The transition from crawling to walking requires infants to relinquish their status as experienced, highly skilled crawlers in favor of being inexperienced, lowskilled walkers. Yet infants willingly undergo this developmental transition, despite incurring costs of shaky steps, frequent falls, and inability to gauge affordances for action in their new upright posture. Why do infants persist with walking when crawling serves the purpose of independent mobility? In this article, we present an integrative analysis of the costs and benefits associated with crawling and walking that challenges prior assumptions, and reveals deficits of crawling and benefits of upright locomotion that were previously overlooked. Inquiry into multiple domains of development reveals that the benefits of persisting with walking outweigh the costs: Compared to crawlers, walking infants cover more space more quickly, experience richer visual input, access and play more with distant objects, and interact in qualitatively new ways with caregivers.

Keywords: crawling; developmentaltransitions; head mounted eye tracking; locomotion; motor development; posture; walking.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Changes in speed over weeks of crawling and walking in 28 infants observed longitudinally from their first week on hands and knees until 19 weeks after they began walking.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Typical first-person perspectives of (A) a 13-month-old crawling infant and (B) a 13-month-old walking infant moving over a raised walkway toward their mothers who were holding toys and offering verbal encouragement. While crawling, infants see primarily the floor; while walking, they can see their mothers and the far wall. Cross-hairs (top panels) show the infant’s direction of gaze as revealed by a head-mounted eye tracker. Bottom panels show the third person view recorded by an external camera perpendicular to the walkway.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Number of carrying bouts per hour in 13-month-old crawling and walking infants. Each symbol represents one infant; horizontal lines denote group averages.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Average frequency of stationary and moving bids in 13-monthold crawling and walking infants as they vied for their mothers’ attention using objects.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Adolph KE. Learning in the development of infant locomotion. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. 1997;62(3) Serial No. 251. doi:10.2307/1166199. - PubMed
    1. Adolph KE. The growing body in action: What infant locomotion tells us about perceptually guided action. In: Klatzy R, Behrmann M, MacWhinney B, editors. Embodiment, ego-space, and action. Erlbaum; Mahwah, NJ: 2008. pp. 275–321.
    1. Adolph KE, Cole WG, Komati M, Garciaguirre JS, Badaly D, Lingeman JM, Sotsky RB. How do you learn to walk? Thousands of steps and dozens of falls per day. Psychological Science. 2012;23:1387–1394. doi:10.1177/0956797612446346. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Adolph KE, Karasik LB, Tamis-LeMonda CS. Using social information to guide action: Infants’ locomotion over slippery slopes. Neural Networks. 2010a;23:1033–1042. doi:10.1016/j.neunet.2010.08.012. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Adolph KE, Karasik LB, Tamis-LeMonda CS. Motor skills. In: Bornstein MH, editor. Handbook of cross-cultural development science: Vol. 1. Domains of development across cultures. Erlbaum; Hillsdale, NJ: 2010b. pp. 61–88.

LinkOut - more resources