Coupling Perception and Action in the Development of Skill: A Dynamic Approach

Motor skill emerges in development as a dynamic process through recurrent perception-action loops where knowledge of the external world is integrated with knowledge of self-movement as the body moves through a force field. This process leads to new movement forms as infants continually explore their body and task space through spontaneous and elicited movements. These new forms are imposed, however, as modifications of the body’s intrinsic dynamics, which are the product of the neuromuscular structures in particular energy and task contexts. In this chapter, I show how the techniques of inverse dynamics can be used to characterize the intrinsic dynamics of infant limb movements, particularly the apportionment of segmental torques. Even at an early age, perception-action loops may be sensitive to dynamic haptic and proprioceptive information.