Spilling thoughts: Configuring attentional resources in infants' goal-directed actions

The focus and organization of attention in perception-action coupling is sy stematically examined in two studies involving 91/2 and 101/2-month-old inf ants engaged in learning goal-directed behaviors. Experiment 1 (discriminat ion study) observed the influence of an attentionally demanding motor task on learning and cognition, while Experiment 2 (means-ends study) observed t he influence of an attentionally demanding goal on motor planning and reach ing performance. Taken together the results of these two experiments reveal ed that when mental processing resources were directed to thinking about mo vement, discrimination performance became compromised, conversely, when pro cessing resources were directed to thinking about the goal-state, the motor planning and execution became compromised. These results suggest a "spilli ng forward" of thoughts onto actions and goal-states and thus an attention- driven cognition/action trade-off for infants' goal-directed actions. Findi ngs highlight the ultimate importance of emerging motor skills on cognition and are contextualized within the on-going dialogues and developmental deb ates surrounding perceptual-motor skill development and problem-solving str ategies during the first year. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights re served.