Motivations and constraints: Factors that shape infant locomotor play

• In Event: Perspectives on play: Motivations and constraints across lifespan and species

Abstract

Infants generate massive amounts of new information through spontaneous locomotor play. Mobile infants know more words, perform better on memory tasks, and have better spatial abilities compared to their same-aged, pre-mobile counterparts (Adolph & Hoch, 2019). But infants don’t crawl or walk to achieve these developmental outcomes or even to improve their locomotor skills. Instead, we hypothesize that such long-term benefits are the incidental byproduct of many real-time bouts of locomotion, each with their own short-term motivations and constraints. Here, we examined the factors that shape infants’ real-time, spontaneous locomotor play.
In Study 1, we asked how infants distribute their locomotor play under different social and environmental conditions (N = 40 12- to 20-month-old walkers). Each infant played in two environmental “toy” conditions (gross-motor versus fine-motor toys) crossed with two social “caregiver” conditions (joint play with caregiver versus independent play without caregiver). Infants engaged in more locomotor play with gross-motor toys than with fine-motor toys, regardless of caregiver condition (Figure 1). But when infants played with fine-motor toys, they moved even less when playing with their caregiver than when playing on their own (Figure 1). Findings indicate that infants are sensitive to the affordances of toys and can “make their own fun,” but they respond to the opportunities offered by caregivers to engage in stationary, fine- motor play.
In Study 2, we tested whether infants alter their spontaneous locomotor play based on the cost of moving. We recorded walking proficiency and locomotor activity in 25 15-month-olds in low-cost versus high-cost conditions; infants wore an unweighted, unpadded snowsuit (Figure 2A) and a padded snowsuit loaded with 15% of their body weight (Figure 2B). Gross-motor toys were placed in the same initial locations, and caregivers did not play with infants. As expected, infants walked less proficiently in the high-cost condition than in the low-cost condition (slower, shorter, wider steps, Figure 2); they also moved less and visited fewer areas in the playroom (ts ≥ 2.8, ps ≤ .01). Most critically, infants moved more selectively when walking was costly. Adjusting for differences in overall activity, infants visited the same proportion of destinations in both conditions (t(24) = 1.4, p = .19), but the types of destinations differed. In the high-cost condition, infants visited fewer objects and locomoted to their caregiver more often than they did in the low-cost condition (ts ≥ 2.3, ps ≤ .03). Infants also took fewer steps and traveled shorter distances to their destinations in the high-cost condition (ts ≥ 2.3, ps ≤ .03). These findings suggest that infants are sensitive to locomotor costs and prioritize locomotion to caregivers and nearby objects when locomotion is costly.
Although infants are motivated to move in the absence of a specific destination or goal (Hoch et al., 2019; 2020), social factors, environmental factors, and varying locomotor costs motivate and constrain spontaneous locomotor play. We propose that together, these factors ensure that infants encounter a variety of people, places, and things that facilitate opportunities for learning.

Authors

• Justine Hoch, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Christina Hospodar, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Karen E Adolph, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author