This study addressed whether combining tinkering with digital storytelling (i.e., narrating and reflecting about experiences to an imagined audience) can engender engineering learning opportunities. Eighty-four families with 5- to 10-year-old (M = 7.69) children (48% female children; 57% White, 11% Asian, 6% Black) watched a video introducing a…

Why is instructional gesture ineffective in some contexts? And what is it about learners that predicts whether they will learn from gestures? This between-subjects linear measurement training study compares gesture instruction to two controls--operant action and transient action--in a diverse sample of first-grade students (N = 174, M[subscript…

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%…

Object exploration is considered a driver of motor, cognitive, and social development. However, little is known about how early childhood education and care settings facilitate object exploration. This study examined if children's exploration of objects during free play was facilitated by the use of particular spatial components (floor, tables,…

The present research studied children in the second year of life (N = 29, M[subscript age] = 21.14 months, SD = 2.64 months) using experimental manipulations within and between subjects to show that responsive parental influence helps children have more frequent sustained object holds with fewer switches between objects compared to when parents…

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…

This report investigates tool learning and its relations to executive functions (EFs) in toddlers. In Study 1 (N = 93), 18-, 20-, 22-, and 24-month-old children learned equally well to choose a correct tool from observation, whereas performance based on feedback improved with age. Knowledge transfer showed significant progress after 22 months of…

The effects of parent-child conversation and object manipulation on children's learning, transfer of knowledge, and memory were examined in two museum exhibits and conversations recorded at home. Seventy-eight children (M[subscript age] = 4.9) and their parents were randomly assigned to receive conversation cards featuring elaborative…

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)

A set of boxes with incongruous animal pictures and a set of plastic Bristle Blocks were presented to 20 preschool children and 20 college students to investigate or play with as they wished. The time spent in investigative exploration and play was recorded over three 10-minute sessions on separate days. (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)