How do age and the acquisition of independent walking relate to changes in infants' everyday experiences? We used a novel ecological momentary assessment (EMA) method to gather caregiver reports of infants' restraint, body position, and object holding via text messages sparsely sampled across multiple days of home life at 10, 11, 12, and 13 months…

Unintentional injury represents a significant health threat to children, and infancy marks a particularly vulnerable stage. This multi-method study (questionnaire, diary) measured parents' (N = 143) use of three popular home-safety practices (teaching about safety, environment modification to reduce access to hazards, supervision) and child injury…

This longitudinal study aimed to investigate infants' spontaneous object interactions during naturalistic longitudinal observations in a day care centre in Japan. Infants' and caregivers' interactions during free play time were videotaped. The main focus related to how infants' object interactions changed during locomotor development. Observations…

Learning to walk leads to an increase in language abilities; however, the underlying mechanisms accounting for this relation remain unclear. Investigating the quality of early gait control may offer some insights. The purpose of this study was to: (1) quantify how 13-month-olds (n = 39; 39% male) and 24-month-olds (n = 39; 59% male) adapt gait…

The current study investigated infants' spontaneous object interactions during naturalistic observation in a daycare centre in Japan. The researcher visited the class for 49 days, once a week, for one year (in the morning for about 1.5 h). Infants' and caregivers' interactions during free play time were videotaped. Of particular interest in this…

Grounded in best practices and current research, this hands-on resource connects the dots that link brain activity, motor and sensory development, movement, and early learning. The expert authors unveil the Kinetic Scale: a visual map of the active learning needs of infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and primary graders that fits each child's…

The present investigation explored the question of whether walking onset is related to infant language development. Study 1 used a longitudinal design (N = 44) to assess infant locomotor and language development every 2 weeks from 10 to 13.5 months of age. The acquisition of walking was associated with a significant increase in both receptive and…

Infants with Down syndrome (DS) are described as being less active and they also experience significant delays in motor development. It is hypothesized that early infant physical activity may be influential for the acquisition of independent walking. Physical activity was monitored longitudinally in 30 infants with DS starting at an average age of…

The aim of this study was to investigate the language development of 20 children who had been exposed to thiamine (vitamin B[subscript 1]) deficiency in infancy due to feeding with soy-based formula that was accidentally deficient of thiamine. In this case-control study, 20 children (12 males, eight females; mean age 31.8 mo [SD 4.1], range 24-39…

A critical aspect of perception-action coupling is the ability to modify ongoing actions in accordance with variations in the environment. Infants' ability to modify their gait patterns to walk down shallow and steep slopes was examined at three nested time scales. Across sessions, a microgenetic training design showed rapid improvements after the…

Three experiments investigated 5- through 8-month-olds' ability to encode self-propelled and caused motion and examined whether processing of motion onset changes when crawling begins. Infants were habituated (Experiments 1 and 2) or familiarized (Experiment 3) with simple causal and noncausal launching events. They then viewed the caused-to-move…

With childhood obesity and physical inactivity at an all-time high, parents and physical educators alike must look to the early years to promote competent and confident young movers. Popular opinion believes that children are naturally active and motor skill development progresses as a normal function of getting older. However, if one looks at…

This study investigated how infants gather information about their environment through looking and how that changes with increases in motor skills. In Experiment 1, 9.5- and 14-month-olds participated in a 10-min free play session with both a stranger and ambiguous toys present. There was a significant developmental progression from passive to…

Argues that the developmental origins of actions are actions themselves and that a future-oriented mode of control is basic to movement at all ages. Suggests that, through active movement, children learn about changing and invariant properties of movement and about coordination with the external world. This learning constitutes the foundation of…

Comments on the article by von Hofsten in this issue by examining four of von Hofsten's propositions: (1) physical actions are expressions of self-organizing systems composed of bodily, task-related, motivational, and environmental factors; (2) the ability to perform actions develops with age; (3) action is situated in a total postural background;…