Infant exuberant object play at home: Immense amounts of time-distributed, variable practice

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% White). Regardless of age, for every infant and time scale, across 10,015 object bouts, object interactions were short (median = 9.8 s) and varied (transitions among dozens of toys and non-toys) but consumed most of infants' time. We suggest that infant exuberant object play-immense amounts of brief, time-distributed, variable interactions with objects-may be conducive to learning object properties and functions, motor skill acquisition, and growth in cognitive, social, and language domains.

Automated summary

Object play is crucial for infant development, but little is known about natural play at home. A study found that infants have short and varied object interactions at home, which consume most of their time. This type of exuberant object play may help infants learn object properties, improve motor skills, and grow in cognitive, social, and language domains.