ABSTRACT
Children's daily contexts shape their experiences. In this study we assessed whether variations in infant placement (e.g., held, bouncy seat) are associated with infants' exposure to adult speech. Using repeated survey sampling of mothers and continuous audio recordings, we tested whether use of independence-supporting placements was associated with adult speech exposure in a Southeastern U.S. sample of 60 4- to 6- month- old infants (38% male, predominately White, not Hispanic/Latinx, from higher SES households). Within-subject analyses indicated that independence-supporting placements were associated with exposure to fewer adult words in the moment. Between-subjects analyses indicated that infants more frequently reported to be in independence-supporting placements that also provided posture support (i.e., exersaucer) were exposed to fewer adult words and less consistent adult speech across the day. These findings indicate that infants' opportunities for exposure to adult speech "in the wild" may vary based on immediate physical context.
ABSTRACT
Researchers and clinicians are increasingly interested in understanding the etiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and identifying behaviors that can provide opportunities for earlier detection and therefore earlier onset of intervention activities. One promising avenue of research lies in the early development of motor skills. The present study compares the motor and object exploration behaviors of an infant later diagnosed with ASD (T.I.) with the same skills in a control infant (C.I.). There were notable difference in fine motor skills by just 3 months of age, one of the earliest fine motor differences reported in the literature. In line with previous findings, T.I. and C.I. demonstrated different patterns of visual attention as early as 2.5 months of age. At later visits to the lab, T.I. engaged in unique problem-solving behaviors not demonstrated by the experimenter (i.e., emulation). Overall, findings suggest that infants later diagnosed with ASD may show differences in fine motor skills and visual attention to objects from the first months of life.
ABSTRACT
Infants spend much of their time exploring objects (Herzberg et al., 2021), and object exploration is linked to learning and development in various domains (e.g., social, cognitive, motor). But how does exploration develop in the first place, and how, exactly, does exploration promote learning? One way to approach these process-oriented questions is with a developmental cascades perspective, which holds that new skills emerge from earlier-developing ones and that various interactions with people and objects accumulate over time to influence multiple domains of development (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010). In this chapter, we describe object exploration from a developmental cascades perspective. In Section 2, we describe typical and atypical trajectories of exploration behaviors, noting how these behaviors emerge from earlier-developing cognitive and motor skills. In Section 3, we discuss how object exploration opens the door for new types of learning opportunities. In Section 4, we discuss early experiences that may shape the development of object exploration. Altogether, we aim to convey that new developments in exploration skills are extensions of earlier-developing skills, and that seemingly insignificant exploratory behaviors (e.g., shaking a rattle) may result in numerous and varied consequences for the developing infant.
