precrawling

From pre- +‎ crawling.

precrawling (not comparable)

1. Before crawling.
   1. (of babies) Before attaining the crawling stage of motor development.

      Holonym: precruising

      Coordinate terms: crawling, cruising, toddling

      precrawling infants

      • 1994, E. J. Gibson, G. Riccio, M. A. Schmuckler, T. A. Stoffregen, D. Rosenberg, J. Taormina, “Detection of the traversability of surfaces by crawling and walking infants”, in Eleanor J. Gibson, editor, An Odyssey in Learning and Perception‎^[1], MIT Press, →ISBN, page 574:

        In this research we investigated perception of traversability in infants making independent trips in an unfamiliar environment. The overall plan was to put young ambulatory infants in a novel situation where surfaces varying in properties defining traversability or nontraversability stretched between the infant and a customary objective (a parent). […] Both crawling and walking subjects were observed when presented with surfaces having different affordances for walking as compared with crawling. The rigidity of a surface — its resistance to deformation — was chosen as the property to be focused on in the experiments to be reported. […] Earlier research (Gibson, Owsley, & Johnston, 1978; Gibson, Owsley, Walker, & Megaw-Nyce, 1979; Gibson & Walker, 1984) showed that even precrawling infants can discriminate differences in rigidity of objects that can be mouthed or handled. Here we asked whether the affordance of rigid and nonrigid surfaces was detected with respect to locomotion.

      • 2001, Rick Alan Caulfield, Infants and Toddlers‎^[2], Prentice Hall, →ISBN, page 162:

        […] precrawling infants do not express the obvious signs of distress at 4 months that they later show at 6 months after learning to crawl (Bertenthal & Campos, 1990).

      • 2013 July 23, David I. Anderson, Joseph J. Campos, David C. Witherington, Audun Dahl, Monica Rivera, Minxuan He, Ichiro Uchiyama, Marianne Barbu-Roth, “The role of locomotion in psychological development”, in Frontiers in Psychology, volume 4, →DOI, →PMID, →PMCID, 440, page 41:

        There is now no doubt that locomotor experience affects visual proprioception. Using two converging research operations—(1) an age-held-constant study of locomotor, prelocomotor, and prelocomotor infants with artificial “walker” experience, and (2) the random assignment of precrawling infants to a condition in which they could control their own movement in a powered mobility device (PMD) (Figure 2) or a no-movement condition, Uchiyama et al. (2008) documented that infants with any kind of locomotor experience showed not only postural compensation to peripheral optic flow in a moving room, but also negative emotional reactions to peripheral optic flow, consistent with a sense of loss of postural stability. These findings confirmed previous reports of greater responsiveness to peripheral optic flow in infants with locomotor experience compared to same-aged infants without locomotor experience (Higgins et al., 1996). In sum, the proposition of the Bertenthal and Campos hypothesis that locomotor experience brings on or greatly improves visual proprioception has been empirically supported.