Structure and irregularity in the spontaneous behavior of young infants.

Persistent, irregular fluctuations in spontaneous motor activity are common in the young of many vertebrate species, but whether the irregularity is intrinsic to the dynamics of motor activation or the result of random perturbations is not known. Analysis of the second-by-second variation in the general body movement of awake human infants 1 and 3 months after birth revealed low dimensional structure in the characteristically irregular motor activity and exponential rates of divergence of initially similar states of motor activation. Results support the conclusion that irregularity is an intrinsic property of the dynamics of motor activation involving relatively few effective degrees of freedom and raise questions about the advantages or disadvantages of irregularity built into early behavioral organization.

[1]  Vincent R. Brown,et al.  Oscillations in Neural Systems , 1999 .

[2]  D. Ruelle,et al.  Ergodic theory of chaos and strange attractors , 1985 .

[3]  James P. Crutchfield,et al.  Geometry from a Time Series , 1980 .

[4]  William P. Fifer,et al.  Fetal development : a psychobiological perspective , 1995 .

[5]  F. Takens.  Detecting strange attractors in turbulence , 1981 .

[6]  E. Thelen,et al.  The dynamics of embodiment: A field theory of infant perseverative reaching , 2001, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[7]  J. Yorke,et al.  Dimension of chaotic attractors , 1982 .

[8]  M. Corner.  Sleep and the beginnings of behavior in the Animal Kingdom—Studies of Ultradian motility cycles in early life , 1977, Progress in Neurobiology.

[9]  J. D. de Vries,et al.  The emergence of fetal behaviour. I. Qualitative aspects. , 1982, Early human development.

[10]  John Guckenheimer,et al.  Noise in chaotic systems , 1982 .

[11]  A. Wolf,et al.  Intermediate Length Scale Effects in Lyapunov Exponent Estimation , 1986 .

[12]  A. N. Sharkovskiĭ.  Dynamic systems and turbulence , 1989 .

[13]  W. P. Smotherman,et al.  The neural control of cyclic motor activity in the fetal rat (Rattus norvegicus) , 1990, Physiology & Behavior.

[14]  J. Falk.  Physiology and Behavior. , 1973 .

[15]  S. Robertson.  Infants of diabetic mothers: late normalization of fetal cyclic motility persists after birth. , 1988, Developmental psychobiology.

[16]  W. P. Smotherman,et al.  Cyclic motor activity in the fetal rat (Rattus norvegicus). , 1988, Journal of Comparative Psychology.

[17]  B. MacLennan,et al.  Variation in motor activity on different time scales and responsiveness to oral stimulation in the rat fetus. , 1998, Developmental psychobiology.

[18]  Steven S. Robertson,et al.  Oscillation and Chaos in Fetal Motor Activity , 1995 .

[19]  H. Prechtl,et al.  Continuity of neural functions from prenatal to postnatal life , 1984 .

[20]  S. Robertson,et al.  The development of cyclic motility in fetuses of diabetic mothers. , 1986, Developmental psychobiology.

[21]  P. Grassberger,et al.  Characterization of Strange Attractors , 1983 .

[22]  T. Gelder,et al.  The dynamical hypothesis in cognitive science , 1998, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[23]  B. Hao,et al.  Directions in chaos , 1987 .

[24]  P. Wolff.  Discontinuous changes in human wakefulness around the end of the second month of life: a developmental perspective , 1984 .

[25]  S. Robertson.  Human cyclic motility: fetal-newborn continuities and newborn state differences. , 1987, Developmental psychobiology.

[26]  Han L. J. van der Maas.  A dynamic systems approach to development: Applications: Smith, Linda B. and Thelen Esther (1993). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press , 1995 .

[27]  Gottfried Mayer-Kress,et al.  Dimensions and Entropies in Chaotic Systems , 1986 .

[28]  K D Farnsworth,et al.  How Do Grazers Achieve Their Distribution? A Continuum of Models from Random Diffusion to the Ideal Free Distribution Using Biased Random Walks , 1999, The American Naturalist.

[29]  Linda B. Smith,et al.  A dynamic systems approach to development: Applications. , 1993 .

[30]  S. Robertson,et al.  The Integration of Body Movement and Attention in Young Infants , 2001, Psychological science.

[31]  S. Robertson,et al.  Cyclic motor activity in the human fetus after midgestation. , 1985, Developmental psychobiology.

[32]  Bennett Bertenthal,et al.  Sensory-Motor Organizations and Development in Infancy and Early Childhood , 1990 .

[33]  S. Robertson.  Temporal Organizaton in Fetal and Newborn Movement , 1990 .

[34]  L. Tsimring,et al.  The analysis of observed chaotic data in physical systems , 1993 .

[35]  A. Wolf,et al.  Determining Lyapunov exponents from a time series , 1985 .

[36]  Neil Gershenfeld,et al.  An Experimentalist’s Introduction to the Observation of Dynamical Systems , 1988 .

[37]  Fraser,et al.  Independent coordinates for strange attractors from mutual information. , 1986, Physical review. A, General physics.

[38]  W. P. Smotherman,et al.  Contractile activity of the uterus prior to labor alters the temporal organization of spontaneous motor activity in the fetal sheep. , 1996, Developmental psychobiology.

[39]  Peter C. M. Molenaar,et al.  Applications of nonlinear dynamics to developmental process modeling , 1998 .