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%…

This commentary endorses J. Kagan's (2008) conclusion that many of the most dramatic findings on early perceptual, cognitive, and social competencies are ambiguous. It supports his call for converging research operations to disambiguate findings from single paradigms and single response indices. The commentary also argues that early competencies…

Argues for a developmental account of social information-gathering ability, one that is consistent with the larger body of evidence concerning sociocognitive abilities in infants and young children. Notes that little is known concerning when and how young children acquire this important skill. (MDM)

Tested infants in their second year with a box task to determine whether they would show a hand preference in solutions involving complete differentiation of roles for the two hands. (HOD)

Examined the development of teaching skills in older siblings responsible for teaching their younger siblings to become competent members of their culture among children from a Zinacantec Maya village in Chiapas, Mexico. Found that by age 4, children took responsibility for initiating teaching situations with their younger siblings, and by 8,…

The present study is based on a form of task analysis that explicates in detail the hypothesized solution behavior of skilled performers of the task. (Authors)