학술논문
Infant Exuberant Object Play at Home: Immense Amounts of Time-Distributed, Variable Practice
Document Type
Journal Articles
Reports - Evaluative
Reports - Evaluative
Author
Herzberg, Orit (ORCID 0000-0003-3706-2531 ); Fletcher, Katelyn K. (ORCID 0000-0002-0641-4728 ); Schatz, Jacob L. (ORCID 0000-0002-2192-3619 ); Adolph, Karen E. (ORCID 0000-0003-2819-134X ); Tamis-LeMonda, Catherine S. (ORCID 0000-0002-9071-4028 )
Source
Subject
Language
English
ISSN
0009-3920
Abstract
Object play yields enormous benefits for infant development. However, little is known about natural play at home where most object interactions occur. We conducted frame-by-frame video analyses of spontaneous activity in two 2-h home visits with 13-month-old crawling infants and 13-, 18-, and 23-month-old walking infants (N = 40; 21 boys; 75% White). Regardless of age, for every infant and time scale, across 10,015 object bouts, object interactions were short (median = 9.8 s) and varied (transitions among dozens of toys and non-toys) but consumed most of infants' time. We suggest that infant exuberant object play--immense amounts of brief, time-distributed, variable interactions with objects--may be conducive to learning object properties and functions, motor skill acquisition, and growth in cognitive, social, and language domains.