# Infant motor experience and caregiver perceptions of infant intentionality: Examining transactional processes of development

> **NIH NIH F32** · VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $65,355

## Abstract

Project Summary
Infants’ early motor experiences (e.g., grasping, crawling, walking) are consistently related to later
achievements and abilities, including their ability to understand and learn from others and even their language
development. However, the mechanisms by which early motor experience is related to later achievements are
not fully understood. Parents’ perceptions of their child’s mental and cognitive abilities increase with the child’s
development. Witnessing the increased capability of their child’s engagement with the environment may result
in increased perception of their child as capable of more advanced thinking, planning, and acting. This
proposed shift in perception could then impact their interactions with their child. In fact, mothers who attribute
greater mental abilities to their infants tend to exhibit more sensitive parenting behavior, and parents provide
differential input depending on their child’s motor skills. Thus, the link between early motor experiences and
subsequent development may be, in part, explained by changes in parents’ perceptions of and interactions
with their child. In the proposed project we will examine how parents’ perceptions are related to their parenting
behavior, and the potential for parents’ perceptions of their children to mediate the association between infants’
early motor experiences and subsequent development. In Study 1, we will first explore whether a training
paradigm that provides infants with specific motor experiences outside of their current repertoire, and that has
been shown to increase infants’ motor skill (i.e., reaching and object exploration), also impacts parents’
perceptions about their child. We expect that changes in infants’ motor skills will be related to changes in
parents’ perceptions, and that individual differences in parents’ perceptions will mediate the relation between
early motor experiences and later skills. In Study 2, we will manipulate parents’ perceptions of their child –
inducing a perspective that either over estimates or under estimates their child’s current capacity for
understanding their own and others’ thoughts, emotions, and agency – and we will then examine the relation
between these different perceptions of their child and their behavior in interactions with their child. We expect
that those parents induced to over-estimate their child’s ability will show more sensitive and stimulating
behavior as compared to those induced to under-estimate their child’s ability. This project has the potential to
advance our understanding of a foundational developmental cascade, to provide insight into how parent–child
transactional processes support development, and to inform targeted interventions for infants and families
whom might benefit from additional support.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10083644
- **Project number:** 5F32HD100079-02
- **Recipient organization:** VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Virginia Salo
- **Activity code:** F32 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $65,355
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-30 → 2021-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10083644

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10083644, Infant motor experience and caregiver perceptions of infant intentionality: Examining transactional processes of development (5F32HD100079-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10083644. Licensed CC0.

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