Poster #77 - Everyday object play at home: A longitudinal study

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

Each day, infants interact with hundreds of novel and familiar objects while exploring their everyday environments. Infants spend most of their time engaging with objects, and object play has been linked to language learning and joint attention. Across the first year, infants also become mobile—they begin to crawl and eventually walk, creating new opportunities to become active participants in object play. Walking infants spend more time engaged with objects compared to crawlers and can access and retrieve distal objects. Here we followed infants longitudinally to create a comprehensive description of object interactions across the transition to walking.

We observed 49 infants engaging in everyday activities at home for 30 minutes, either in-person or via videoconferencing. Infant observations were anchored to the onset of walking (five consecutive steps without stopping or falling; M = 12.60 months, SD = 1.54). In total, sessions spanned the 6 months before walk onset to 6 months post walk onset. We quantified infants’ object interactions by calculating the duration of infant object engagement and the frequency of object touches. Durations were identified by marking the onsets and offsets of each episode of manual contact with an object. Coders also noted every instance of object touching within these bouts. Infants could touch the same object repeatedly (e.g., releasing an object briefly and picking it back up) or touch different objects (e.g., playing with a ball and then a spoon). Finally, touches were categorized as being unique (e.g., object not previously touched within a session) and distal (e.g., infants locomoted to the object within 5 seconds prior to the touch).

We examined change over time in each of these measures with a series of piece-wise growth models. Analyses revealed that time engaged with objects increased steadily across the six pre-walking sessions but flattened after infants acquired approximately 1 month of walking experience (R2 = 0.07, SE = 1.95, p < 0.001; Figure 1a). Similarly, the rate of object touches increased during pre-walking months and plateaued after infants had 1.43 months of walking experience (R2 = 0.22, SE = 1.04, p < 0.001; Figure 1b). The rate of unique object touches followed a similar pattern, such that the rate increased leading up to walk onset and then stabilized (R2 = 0.07, p < 0.001; Figure 2a). Finally, the rate of distal object touches increased until infants had about 2.10 months of walking experience, and growth after this inflection point was slower (R2= .21, p < .001; Figure 2b).

Taken together, findings indicate that the transition to walking changes infants’ opportunities to engage with objects, particularly in their first months as walkers. Subsequent walking experience, however, did not appear to increase rates of object engagement suggesting that additional time as walkers may not provide increased benefits for engagement opportunities. Regardless, new walkers’ increased interactions with objects may result in new opportunities for language learning and joint attention. Future research is needed to further understand interactions between walking and object exploration.

Authors

• Madyson R Diehl, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Kaitlyn B Cortez, University of Pittsburgh

• Samantha Plate, University of Pittsburgh

• Joshua L Schneider, University of Pittsburgh

• Emily Roemer Britsch, University of Pittsburgh

• Jana M Iverson, Boston University