General exploration behaviors are the seemingly random movements infants engage in with their arms, hands and fingers and as well as with with the feet which bring the hands and feet into contact with their bodies, clothing and surrounding surfaces.
These behaviors include feeling their body and surfaces, mouthing their hands, waving their arms, and close visual attention at their hands
Embryos begin performing these exploration behaviors in utero at around 8 weeks gestation. Exploration behaviors include touching the wall of the uterus, touching their own bodies and bringing the hands to the mouth and face.
These general exploration behaviors provide opportunities for infants to gather information and learn about their own bodies and the surfaces around them.
Study of self touching
Britanny Thomas and colleagues studied infant self touching, that is contact between the hands and face, body, and surrounding surfaces from birth to 24 weeks.
In the earlier weeks, the infants mainly contacted the body using the dorsum of the hand, with a high frequency of self-contacts made with a fist, progressing to dorsum contacts with a semi-closed hand, including contacts with the back of the fingers and the side of the hand. Duration of hand-to-body contact length was brief, marked mainly by contact and release.
Will at 8 weeks
- At 8 weeks Will mostly keeps his head in the midline and the trunk is held steady.
- He engages in continuous spontaneous movement of his limbs his hands into contact with his head and surrounding surfaces, and also into his visual field.
- During brief periods of looking at this hands Will slows down his spontaneous limb movements.
- Because his hands are mostly lightly fisted the contact is made between the dorsal aspect of the hands and fingers.
- Notice also the exploratory movements of the feet.
- Notice how the spontaneous movements bring his hands briefly into his field of vision.
- Towards the end of the video I start to talk to him. Notice how he stops moving as he focuses his attention on me.
Will at 10 weeks
- In this video you see Will in supine on a duvet.
- At 10 weeks he is also better able to keep his head in the midline, and is starting to bring his hands towards the midline.
- The softer surface provided by the duvet may also contribute to head and trunk stability.
- Notice the continuous movements of the limbs and the changing contact between the hands with each other, with other body parts, with clotting and the support surface.
- This continuous movement stops when he shifts his visual attention to watching me as I move around in the room.
Which self-touching patterns of movement does he engage in? What parts of the body does he touch?
What these videos tell us about the development of hand function.
Earlier and textbook counts of the development of hand function tend to focus on the development of reach, grasp and manipulation fro about 3 months.
I hope that these video clips clearly should the infants early, spontaneous and exploratory hand actions contribute to the infant's sense of self and their connection to the social and physical environment.