THE DEVELOPMENTAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INFANTS EXPLORATION AND ACTIONON SLANTED SURFACES

This research provides converging evidence that infants use explorator y activity to differentiate slant around a horizontal axis before they relate information about slant to consequences for locomotion. In Exp eriment 1, 14-month-old toddlers walked down safe, shallow 10 degrees hills and slid down or avoided risky, steep 36 degrees hills when heig ht of the hills was held constant. Results indicate that judgments wer e based an slant. In Experiment 2, 9-month-old crawling infants explor ed shallow 10 degrees and steep 30 degrees slopes differentially in a nonlocomotor task. Exploration was similar to previous locomotor resea rch with full-size hills, even though crawlers plunged headlong over b oth shallow and steep hills in the earlier study.