Cultural Diversity in Infant Motor Development: A Comparison of Early Locomotor Experience
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Most of the research on infant motor development is based on studies with infants and caregivers living in urban and western societies, which is problematic from a scientific and ethical perspective. Both ethnographic descriptions as well as a handful of empirical investigations across diverse cultural contexts indicate there may be significant variability in early motor experience across cultures. To better understand whether differences in early experience are linked to motor development, we observed 52 12-month olds ( SD = .66) with their caregivers in three cultural contexts: Tanna (ni-Vanuatu; N = 9), Aka (Central African Republic; N = 10), and rural villages in Tajikistan ( N = 33). We coded the videos to determine the duration of time infants spent restricted, the time they engaged in spontaneous movement, and the ways in which they were restriction. When unrestricted, infants spent similar proportions of time exploring their environment through locomotion across the three cultural groups. However, Tajik infants were restricted from movement more than infants in Vanuatu and the Aka community. Restriction duration did not correlate with infants’ movement duration. Notably, Tajik caregivers primarily used devices for restriction, while ni-Vanuatu and Aka caregivers relied on holding. These variations in parental choices and how they shape children’s early environments provide insights into how caregiving practices influence the context of motor development across cultures. While previous studies highlight direct parenting practices’ influence on motor development, our findings suggest indirect practices may shape movement opportunities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".