Manual exploratory behaviors in six-month-old infants at environmental and biological risk

Abstract

Background: Exploratory behaviors are essential and may improve different skill development. Different risk factors may negatively impact neuromotor development, such as biological risk and environmental risk.

Objective: Assess and discriminate exploratory behaviors of infants at environmental or biological risk and infants at non-risk.

Methods: Sixty-four six-month-old infants were divided into three independent groups: Group 1 (G1), 28 healthy full-term infants; Group 2 (G2), 21 full-term infants of low socioeconomic status (SES); Group 3 (G3), 15 very preterm infants. Nine exploratory behaviors were assessed: fingering, mouthing, waving, tapping, banging, transferring, rotating, alternating, and squeezing.

Results: For the malleable object, fingering (p = 0.005) and transferring (p = 0.046) behaviors were different between G2 and G3 whereas waving behavior (p = 0.041) differed between G1 and G3 and transferring (p = 0.003) between G1 and G2. For the rigid object, waving was different between G1 and G3 (p = 0.018) whereas transferring behavior differed between G2 and G3 (p = 0.019). Total number of behaviors was significantly different between G1 and G2 for malleable (p = 0.019) and rigid objects (p = 0.009). Intragroup analysis revealed differences between malleable and rigid objects for transferring (p = 0.013), squeezing (p < 0.0001), fingering (p < 0.0001), and banging (p = 0.013) behaviors in infants from G1. Fingering and squeezing (p < 0.0001) were different between malleable and rigid objects in G2 (p = 0.009 and p < 0.0001) and G3 (p = 0.004 and p < 0.0001).

Conclusion: Risk factors and object properties influence exploratory behaviors, mainly in low SES infants. Fingering and banging behaviors are favored by rigid objects, while squeezing is favored by malleable objects.

Keywords: Infant development; Motor skills; Risk factors.