A Fetus and Infant Developmental Scenario: Self-organization of Goal-directed Behaviors Based on Sensory Constraints

To gain a synthetic understanding of the emergence of babies’ goal-directed behaviors that are important for early development, we constructed an early developmental scenario for self-organization of these behaviors. This scenario is guided by a principle of sensorimotor integration based on sensory constraints. We constructed a neural model to represent our proposed scenario with simplified but essential and realistic biological features. To test this early developmental scenario, we performed simulations with musculoskeletal body models. In a series of experiments we found that sensory constraints triggered two important developmental transitions. First, in a fetus model, the non-uniform distribution of tactile sensors generated hand-face contact behaviors, as a result of the self-organizing process. Second, in an infant model, the limitation of visual field produced hand regard behaviors, also in a self-organizing manner. Our results suggest that sensory constraints may drive goal-directed behaviors and consequently trigger human early development in an embodied and self-organized manner.