Résumé
Independent mobility invites a new world of opportunities for learning. Dozens of studies show that infants' crawling experience is related to improvements in motor, perceptual, cognitive, and social domains (e.g., for review see Bertenthal & Campos, 1990). For example, experienced crawlers show more proficient, skillful gait patterns on motor tasks. They outperform novice crawlers on perceptual tasks such as avoiding a drop-off on a visual cliff and on cognitive tasks such as searching for hidden objects. Similarly, they show more mature patterns of visual exploration and display more social independence by venturing farther away from caregivers.