Maternal influences on infant hand-use during play with toys

Infant hand-use preferences are related to mother's, but not father's, handedness. Since infants match mother's hand-use during toy play, maternal handedness can affect infant hand-use. Twenty-eight mother-infant pairs (14 left-handed and 14 right-handed infants but all right-handed mothers) were videotaped while playing with six toys on the infant's 7-, 9-, and 11-month birthdays. Play was analyzed for five kinds of hand-use biasing situations, but maternal hand-use was the dominant influence. Infant matching of maternal hand-use increased with age and right-handed infants and female infants matched maternal hand-use more frequently. Concordance of hand-use preference between mother and infant seemed to account for both the matching and the stronger preferences of the right-handed compared to the left-handed infants.