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Infant exuberant object play at home: Immense amounts of time-distributed, variable practice
Orit Herzberg1, Katelyn K Fletcher2, Jacob L Schatz2
1Department of Psychology, New York University, New York City, New York, USA.
Child Development
|September 13, 2021
Summary
Infants engage in frequent, brief object play at home, interacting with many items. This extensive object interaction supports infant development across cognitive, motor, and social-linguistic domains.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Infant Behavior
- Child Development
Background:
- Object play is crucial for infant development.
- Limited research exists on naturalistic object play in home environments.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze spontaneous object play in infants within their homes.
- To understand the characteristics and duration of infant object interactions.
Main Methods:
- Frame-by-frame video analysis of spontaneous infant activity.
- Observations conducted during two 2-hour home visits.
- Study included 40 infants aged 13 to 23 months, both crawling and walking.
Main Results:
- Infants engaged in 10,015 object play bouts.
- Object interactions were brief (median 9.8 seconds) but highly varied.
- Despite brevity, object play consumed a significant portion of infants' time.
Conclusions:
- Infant object play is characterized by numerous, short, and diverse interactions.
- This 'exuberant object play' likely promotes learning of object properties and functions.
- Extensive object interaction supports motor skill acquisition and cognitive, social, and language development.
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