Cascading Consequences of Object Play on Cognition

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Objects represent a central component to children’s lives – from Piaget to Thelen, research has demonstrated that physical exploration and mental representation of objects are crucial for children’s development. A lot of variables contribute to children’s object knowledge – visual development enables perception of complex physical characteristics, motor development helps physical exploration, and cognitive development supports advanced mental representations and language about objects. Importantly, object exploration has been shown to reciprocally impact motor development and social interaction. However, less work has systematically examined the cascading effects of object exploration on different areas of cognition, including word learning, language, memory, spatial skills, and math learning, both on short-term and long-term timescales. This is the aim of the current symposium.
Four talks will probe the concurrent and cascading impacts of object play on multiple areas of cognition. The first talk discusses how children’s real-time touches of objects predicts caregiver’s subsequent speech input. The second talk builds on these findings by showing that caregiver-child dyadic object play has both short-term impact on linguistic input and longer-term language outcomes, particularly in families with no history of ASD. The third talk further expands on object play, memory, and language, showing that children’s physical exploration of novel objects improves retention of novel words, though has less impact on short-term generalization. The final talk will demonstrate how specific types of play and touch have cascading impacts on later math and spatial skills. Taken together, these talks demonstrate the importance of object play in shaping cognitive development over multiple timescales.

Sub Unit

• Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Chair

• Sarah C Kucker, Southern Methodist University

Individual Presentations

• Cascading Effects of Parental Behavior on Infant Attention during Joint Play - Presenting Author: Christian M Harms, University of California - Davis; Non-Presenting Author: Lisa M Oakes, University of California - Davis

• Object Engagement, Parent Labels, and Language: Dyadic Play in Toddlers at Elevated Likelihood of Autism - Presenting Author: Emily Roemer Britsch, University of Pittsburgh; Non-Presenting Author: Jana M Iverson, Boston University

• Exploration Facilitates Retention during Novel Noun Generalization - Presenting Author: Megan G Lorenz, Augustana College; Non-Presenting Author: Sarah C Kucker, Southern Methodist University

• Early Block Play Strategy Predicts Later Math and Spatial Reasoning - Presenting Author: Rosalie Odean, Ohio State University; Non-Presenting Author: Corinne A. Bower, California State University - Los Angeles; Non-Presenting Author: Brian Nicholas Verdine; Non-Presenting Author: Jelani Medford; Non-Presenting Author: Maya Marzouk; Non-Presenting Author: Roberta M Golinkoff, University of Delaware; Non-Presenting Author: Kathy A Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University