Infant Placement and Language Exposure in Daily Life.

Children's daily contexts shape their experiences. In this study we assessed whether variations in infant placement (e.g., held, bouncy seat) are associated with infants' exposure to adult speech. Using repeated survey sampling of mothers and continuous audio recordings, we tested whether use of independence-supporting placements was associated with adult speech exposure in a Southeastern U.S. sample of 60 4- to 6- month- old infants (38% male, predominately White, not Hispanic/Latinx, from higher SES households). Within-subject analyses indicated that independence-supporting placements were associated with exposure to fewer adult words in the moment. Between-subjects analyses indicated that infants more frequently reported to be in independence-supporting placements that also provided posture support (i.e., exersaucer) were exposed to fewer adult words and less consistent adult speech across the day. These findings indicate that infants' opportunities for exposure to adult speech "in the wild" may vary based on immediate physical context.

Case report: An evaluation of early motor skills in an infant later diagnosed with autism.

Researchers and clinicians are increasingly interested in understanding the etiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and identifying behaviors that can provide opportunities for earlier detection and therefore earlier onset of intervention activities. One promising avenue of research lies in the early development of motor skills. The present study compares the motor and object exploration behaviors of an infant later diagnosed with ASD (T.I.) with the same skills in a control infant (C.I.). There were notable difference in fine motor skills by just 3 months of age, one of the earliest fine motor differences reported in the literature. In line with previous findings, T.I. and C.I. demonstrated different patterns of visual attention as early as 2.5 months of age. At later visits to the lab, T.I. engaged in unique problem-solving behaviors not demonstrated by the experimenter (i.e., emulation). Overall, findings suggest that infants later diagnosed with ASD may show differences in fine motor skills and visual attention to objects from the first months of life.

How babies use their hands to learn about objects: Exploration, reach-to-grasp, manipulation, and tool use.

Object play is essential for infant learning, and infants spend most of their day with objects. Young infants learn about objects and their properties through multimodal exploration facilitated by caregivers. They figure out how to transport their hands to where objects are, and how to grasp objects in increasingly complex ways. Building on earlier experiences, they learn how to use their hands collaboratively to act on objects, and how to use objects to act on other objects in instrumental ways. These changes in how infants use their hands occur during the most rapid period of motor development and may have important downstream implications for other domains. Recent research findings have established the importance of effective fine motor skills for later academic skills, yet our understanding of the factors that influence the early development of hand skills is sparse at best. Latest research on reaching, grasping, object manipulation, hands collaboration, and tool use is reviewed and connections among these developments are explained from the perspective of developmental cascades. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Motor Skill and Performance Psychology > Development and Aging.

Infants exploring objects: A cascades perspective.

Infants spend much of their time exploring objects (Herzberg et al., 2021), and object exploration is linked to learning and development in various domains (e.g., social, cognitive, motor). But how does exploration develop in the first place, and how, exactly, does exploration promote learning? One way to approach these process-oriented questions is with a developmental cascades perspective, which holds that new skills emerge from earlier-developing ones and that various interactions with people and objects accumulate over time to influence multiple domains of development (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010). In this chapter, we describe object exploration from a developmental cascades perspective. In Section 2, we describe typical and atypical trajectories of exploration behaviors, noting how these behaviors emerge from earlier-developing cognitive and motor skills. In Section 3, we discuss how object exploration opens the door for new types of learning opportunities. In Section 4, we discuss early experiences that may shape the development of object exploration. Altogether, we aim to convey that new developments in exploration skills are extensions of earlier-developing skills, and that seemingly insignificant exploratory behaviors (e.g., shaking a rattle) may result in numerous and varied consequences for the developing infant.

Characteristics of brief sticky mittens training that lead to increases in object exploration.

The onset of independent prehension marks the beginning of infants' direct interaction with the physical world. The success infants have in contacting objects with their hands and arms can have both visual and auditory consequences; objects may move and collide with other objects or fall onto table surfaces. Seeing and hearing these events could have important consequences for infants' learning about objects and their subsequent behavior toward objects. The current research assessed the effects of brief object manipulation experiences and how a specific characteristic of training, auditory feedback produced by hard plastic toys colliding with a tabletop surface, affects pre-reaching infants' subsequent object exploration. In Experiment 1, infants participated in either active "sticky" mittens training or passive "nonsticky" mittens training with a set of toys; before and after this experience, infants explored a teether. Results showed that infants participating in active training increased looking toward and sustained touching of the teether from pre- to post-training, whereas infants receiving passive training decreased their looking toward and touching of the teether following training. To investigate whether infants' exploration behaviors were related to the amount of auditory feedback produced by the objects during training, in Experiment 2 data were collected from infants who received active sticky mittens training that had either more or less auditory feedback potential. Results showed more robust increases in infants' exploratory activity from pre- to post-training in the more auditory feedback condition compared with infants' exploratory activity in the less auditory feedback condition. These findings support the idea that active control of objects, including experiencing contingent feedback through multiple sensory modalities, promotes the development of object exploration during early infancy.

Infants' observation of tool-use events over the first year of life.

How infants observe a goal-directed instrumental action provides a unique window into their understanding of others' behavior. In this study, we investigated eye-gaze patterns while infants observed events in which an actor used a tool on an object. Comparisons among 4-, 7-, 10-, and 12-month-old infants and adults reveal changes in infants' looking patterns with age; following an initial face bias, infants' scan path eventually shows a dynamic integration of both the actor's face and the objects on which they act. This shift may mark a transition in infants' understanding of the critical components of tool-use events and their understanding of others' behavior.

Active Motor Training Has Long-term Effects on Infants' Object Exploration.

Long-term changes in infants' behavior as a result of active motor training were studied. Thirty-two infants completed three visits to the laboratory. At the first visit, infants were 3 months old and completed an object exploration assessment. Then the experimenter demonstrated the motor training procedures appropriate for the infant's experimental condition, and parents took home custom infant mittens (either sticky or non-sticky) and a bag of lightweight toys to practice with their infants. Over the course of the following 2 weeks, infants participated in 10 sessions of either active (sticky) or passive (non-sticky) mittens training at home with their parents. Infants who participated in active mittens training wore mittens with the palms covered in Velcro, allowing them to pick up and move around small toys. Infants who participated in passive mittens training wore non-sticky mittens, and their parents moved the toys through their visual fields on their behalf. After completing the training, infants returned to the lab for the second visit. At visit two, infants participated in another object exploration assessment as well as a reaching assessment. Parents returned the training materials to the lab at the second visit, and were told not to continue any specific training regimen from this point forward. Two months later, when infants were about 5.5 months of age, they returned to the lab for a third visit. At the third visit, infants completed the same two assessments as during the second visit. The results of this study indicate that infants who participated in active motor training engaged in more sophisticated object exploration when compared to infants who received passive training. These findings are consistent with others in the literature showing that active motor training at 3 months of age facilitates the processes of object exploration and engagement. The current results and others reveal that the effects of early experience can last long after training ceases.

Motor training at 3 months affects object exploration 12 months later.

The development of new motor skills alters how infants interact with objects and people. Consequently, it has been suggested that motor skills may initiate a cascade of events influencing subsequent development. However, only correlational evidence for this assumption has been obtained thus far. The current study addressed this question experimentally by systematically varying reaching experiences in 40 three-month-old infants who were not reaching on their own yet and examining their object engagement in a longitudinal follow-up assessment 12 months later. Results revealed increased object exploration and attention focusing skills in 15-month-old infants who experienced active reaching at 3 months of age compared to untrained infants or infants who only passively experienced reaching. Further, grasping activity after - but not before - reaching training predicted infants' object exploration 12 months later. These findings provide evidence for the long-term effects of reaching experiences and illustrate the cascading effects initiated by early motor skills.