  Movement experience and the coordination of perception and action are the
basis of developing body awareness, emotion, motivation and cognition and the
sense of self. The four limbs play a key role in the developing sense of body
ownership, agency and peripersonal space. Neonatal limb movements were
investigated respective processes of self-organization and developing body
awareness. Application of symbolic dynamics to kinematic data of radial
distance trajectories of the hands and feet determined 16 coordination patterns
according to the distance of the effectors to the body center. From time series
analysis of occurrence and recurrence of these configurations of 25 movement
episodes of 14 infants both characteristics of self-organization as well as
features assumed to provide neonates with experiences involved in the
development of body awareness were found. With increasing age a shift from
configurations with proximal to distal positions suggests a role of the
proximal-distal dimension in movement development. We conclude that
self-organization in spontaneous movements provides neonates with perceptual
body- and self-specifying stimuli involved in developing body awareness and
postulate the involvement of emotional and cognitive processes.
