Figure 1.
The two types of movements considered during the pre-natal period and the first 3 months of post-natal life: hand to mouth (A and C) and hand to eye (B and D) performed by a fetus at 18 weeks of gestation and by a 3 month old infant.
Figure 2.
The two types of movements considered after the 4th month of life: hand to mouth (A) and hand to object (B) performed by an 8 month old child.
Table 1.
Frequency of occurrence for the three different types of movements analysed at three different times during the prenatal life and six different times during the first year of life for each foetus/infant.
Figure 3.
Examples of hand paths during movements towards the mouth and the object.
The upper panel illustrates movements towards the mouth performed by the same infant at 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 and 12 months of age. The lower panel represents reaching movements towards the object at 4, 8 and 12 months of age by the same child. The origin of the referring system (0,0) indicates the position of the target. Measurement unit for both X and Y displacements is the length of the humerus bone.
Figure 4.
Movement Time, expressed in milliseconds, in the pre and post-natal periods.
Figure 5.
Deceleration time in percentage for movements performed towards the eye and towards the mouth at six different times before and after birth.
Figure 6.
Movement Time for reaching to the mouth and to the object respectively at 4, 8 and 12 months of age.