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Toys and social interaction between infant peers
Insights
Young infants readily engage socially with peers, with or without toys. Social interaction, including smiling and gesturing, is prominent even at 10 months of age.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Infant social behavior
Background:
- Previous assumptions suggested infants lack social responsiveness.
- Toys were thought to divert infant attention from social interaction.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate infant social interaction with peers.
- To determine the influence of toys on infant social engagement.
Main Methods:
- Compared interactions of 44 infant pairs (10-12 and 22-24 months) with and without toys.
- Observed social behaviors like contact, smiling, gesturing, and toy play.
Main Results:
- Infants showed more social interaction (contact, smiling, gesturing) when no toys were present.
- With toys, infants engaged in showing, exchanging, and synchronous play.
- Both age groups demonstrated responsiveness to peers, irrespective of toys.
Conclusions:
- Infants as young as 10 months are socially responsive to unfamiliar peers.
- Social interaction is not preempted by toys; toy play can also be synchronous.
- Infants actively engage with both social and non-social aspects of their environment.
Abstract:
Claims that young infants fail to react in a social manner to one another and that toys preempt attention to peers were assessed by comparing the interactions observed between infant peers when they met in the presence of toys versus in their absence. 44 pairs of unacquainted infants (either 10--12 or 22--24 months of age) came with their mothers to an unfamiliar room. Without toys available in the room, infants of both ages more often contacted one another, smiled at and gestured to one another, and duplicated each other's actions. With toys, they showed and exchanged toys and spent more time synchronously manipulating similar play material. The results document that infants as young as 10 months of age are responsive to the person and behavior of an unfamiliar peer and that they are no less responsive than older infants to the social versus nonsocial aspects of a novel setting.