As a baby begins to crawl, they begin to make decisions. How do babies use perception to guide their crawling movements? In an experiment, an adjustable slope apparatus was made and used to study which actions were possible for a baby and which ones weren’t. A successful trial meant that the baby could crawl from one end of the slope to other without falling or having an adult interfere to help. The babies who had just learned to crawl, the novice crawlers, were able to crawl across a flat slope, but showed poor judgement when it came to bigger slopes. The inability to properly judge what can actually be done is often seen in novice crawlers, as they just want to try everything and learn from their experience.
The intermediate crawlers, babies who had a little more experience with crawling, were better judges of what they could and could not do. The advanced crawlers, as one may guess, were the best judges of all. The advanced crawlers seemed to know what they could and could not do, and they could also adjust their bodies accordingly to help them overcome any obstacle they encountered. As babies learn how to crawl, they become aware of the many ways they can move their bodies in any given environment and circumstance.
Learning to crawl is essentially learning to behave in a flexible way. There are days when a baby can crawl and there are days when a baby can’t seem to crawl, but movement is not linear. Babies acquire the skills they need for movement in no particular order. This means that crawling is not a mandatory phase like everyone seems to think it is. Instead, crawling is just another way for a baby to move from one place to another.
