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%…

Manual skills slowly develop throughout infancy and have been shown to create clear views of objects that provide better support for visually sustained attention, recognition, memory, and learning. These clear views may coincide with the development of manual skills, or that social scaffolding supports clear viewing experiences like those…

Associations between infants' transition to walking and object activities were examined. Fifty infants were observed longitudinally during home observations. At 11 months, all infants were crawlers; at 13 months, half became walkers. Over age, infants increased their total time with objects and frequency of sharing objects with mothers.…

Data from 492 Italian infants (8-18 months) were collected with the parental questionnaire MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories to describe early actions and gestures (A-G) "vocabulary" and its relation with spoken vocabulary in both comprehension and production. A-G were more strongly correlated with word comprehension…

Presents four studies designed to explore the ability of 6- to 9-month-old infants to differentiate objects on the basis of configuration or structure and to recognize a particular configuration after varying experiences with it. It was found that 9-month-olds but not 6-month-olds were capable of recognizing the invariant form of objects.…

The visual and motor responses to novel and familiar stimuli were measured in twelve 6-month-old infants, using new measures of integration and concordance. Results indicate that the infants' responses to the stimuli were both integrated and concordant. (Author/JMB)

Infants aged 3, 5, and 7 months were shown solid objects and comparable intangible images of objects both within and beyond possible arm's reach. The infants' emotional reactions and reaching behavior in the presence of the image stimuli were found to be very similar to their responses to the solid objects. (Author/JMB)

Argues that the development of object perception in infancy involves the detection of structural invariants and that such detection is best understood in the context of dynamic events. (Author/MP)

The early phase of imitation was studied in children between 6 and 18 months by means of the presentation of 22 actions. (SB)

This study examined the relationship of crossing the midline while reaching for objects to the development of bimanual reaching among infants ages 12, 18, and 26 weeks. Findings indicated that the frequency of two-hand grabbing and the number of midline reaches increased with age; most midline reaches were part of two-handed reaches and occurred…

In two experiments, forty 26-week-old infants were repeatedly exposed to an object and were then shown an object that was different from the original object in color, shape and/or texture. Results showed that looking and manipulation increased for the novel shape and texture objects and looking increased for the novel color object. (Author/JMB)

Forty 10-month-old infants were given two minutes to explore tactually an object in a totally darkened room. Subsequently, during a two-minute test trial in the dark, 10 infants were given the same object and 10 were given a novel shape. Novel shapes were manipulated significantly longer than familiar forms. (RH)

Examines claims about the role of object-sharing in development by describing development of !Kung infants' interest in objects and their caregivers' actions toward them when they are engaged in object-related acts. (PCB)

Twenty-five one-year-olds were administered two tasks (each of which consisted of a familiarization stage followed by a recognition stage) in order to determine whether infants can recognize the shapes of objects by touch alone. (CM)

When older siblings were present with infants and their mothers in the backyard of a private home, the infants went further from their mothers, traversed a larger area of the yard, left their mothers more quickly, and stayed away longer. (RH)