Abstract
In this longitudinal study we examined the stability of exploratory play in infancy and its relation to cognitive development in early childhood. We assessed infants' (N = 130, mean age at enrollment = 12.02 months, SD = 3.5 months; range: 5–19 months) exploratory play four times over 9 months. Exploratory play was indexed by infants' attention to novelty, inductive generalizations, efficiency of exploration, face preferences, and imitative learning. We assessed cognitive development at the fourth visit for the full sample, and again at age three for a subset of the sample (n = 38). The only measure that was stable over infancy was the efficiency of exploration. Additionally, infants' efficiency score predicted vocabulary size and distinguished at-risk infants recruited from early intervention sites from those not at risk. Follow-up analyses at age three provided additional evidence for the importance of the efficiency measure: more efficient exploration was correlated with higher IQ scores. These results suggest that the efficiency of infants' exploratory play can be informative about longer-term cognitive development.
Highlights
Parents, educators, and researchers (Groos, 1901; Vygotsky, 1934/1962; Piaget, 1962; Berlyne, 1969; Bruner et al, 1976; Rubin et al, 1983; Power, 2000) all tend to believe that children learn through exploratory play; understanding the relation between play and cognitive development remains an ongoing challenge
The clinical diagnosis of developmental disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is partly based upon the judgment that children engage in atypical exploratory play, distinguishing typical and atypical exploratory play remains largely a matter of intuition
Other work has focused on the relation between visual attention and manual action during object exploration (Fenson et al, 1974; Johnson and Brody, 1977; Ruff, 1986; Ruff and Dubiner, 1987; Oakes et al, 1991, 2002; Ruff et al, 1992; Oakes and Tellinghuisen, 1994; Cassia and Simion, 2002; Perone and Oakes, 2006; Soska et al, 2010; Baumgartner and Oakes, 2013) Such research suggests that children’s visual exploration becomes more efficient, their manual exploration becomes more complex, and the link between their visual and motor systems become more integrated over development
Summary
Educators, and researchers (Groos, 1901; Vygotsky, 1934/1962; Piaget, 1962; Berlyne, 1969; Bruner et al, 1976; Rubin et al, 1983; Power, 2000) all tend to believe that children learn through exploratory play; understanding the relation between play and cognitive development remains an ongoing challenge. Other work has focused on the relation between visual attention and manual action during object exploration (Fenson et al, 1974; Johnson and Brody, 1977; Ruff, 1986; Ruff and Dubiner, 1987; Oakes et al, 1991, 2002; Ruff et al, 1992; Oakes and Tellinghuisen, 1994; Cassia and Simion, 2002; Perone and Oakes, 2006; Soska et al, 2010; Baumgartner and Oakes, 2013) Such research suggests that children’s visual exploration becomes more efficient, (e.g., reflected in faster encoding of visual information), their manual exploration becomes more complex, and the link between their visual and motor systems become more integrated over development These developments may represent increasingly sophisticated cognitive skills, more opportunities for learning, or both
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
