Children’s use of everyday artifacts: Learning the hidden affordance of zipping

Rachwani, Jaya; Kaplan, Brianna E.; Tamis‐LeMonda, Catherine S.; Adolph, Karen E

doi:10.1002/dev.22049

Cited by 9 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Mothers' verbal and manual input aligned with the developmental progression previously documented in children's actions on twist-off and pull-off containers, zippers, and Duplo bricks (Kaplan et al, 2022;Rachwani, Kaplan, et al, 2020;. As hypothesized, mothers' helping behaviors showed distinct age-related patterns, rather than simply decreasing with child age.…”

Section: Mothers' Input Across Nested Time Scalessupporting

confidence: 68%

“…Additionally, implementation of designed actions often entails difficult perceptual–motor requirements. A zipper tab must be pulled opposite to the force of the stabilizing hand and approximately parallel to the zipper teeth (Rachwani, Kaplan, et al., 2020). A twist‐off lid requires lifting and replacing one hand to twist continuously to the left while stabilizing the base with the other hand (Rachwani, Tamis‐LeMonda, et al., 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How mothers help children learn to use everyday objects

Kaplan,

Kasaba,

Rachwani

et al. 2023

Developmental Psychobiology

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Children must learn specific motor actions to use everyday objects as their designers intended. However, designed actions are not obvious to children and often are difficult to implement. Children must know what actions to do and how to execute them. Previous work identified a protracted developmental progression in learning designed actions—from nondesigned exploratory actions, to display of the designed action, to successful implementation. Presumably, caregivers can help children to overcome the challenges in discovering and implementing designed actions. Mothers of 12‐, 18‐ to 24‐, and 30‐ to 36‐month‐olds (N = 74) were asked to teach their children to open containers with twist‐off or pull‐off lids. Mothers’ manual and verbal input aligned with the developmental progression and with children's actions in the moment, pointing to the role of attuned social information in helping children learn to use objects for activities of daily living. However, mothers sometimes “overhelped” by implementing designed actions for children instead of getting children to do it themselves, highlighting the challenges of teaching novices difficult motor actions.

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Section: Mothers' Input Across Nested Time Scalessupporting

confidence: 68%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How mothers help children learn to use everyday objects

Kaplan,

Kasaba,

Rachwani

et al. 2023

Developmental Psychobiology

Self Cite

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“…That is, our first step in testing associations between joint engagement and infant object play classified object interactions as simple or complex. Yet, object interactions within these types of play vary along several dimensions, such as whether infants combine multiple objects or actions into a sequenced bout versus repeat a single action (e.g., Bigelow et al., 2004; Lillard, 2014; Lockman & Tamis‐LeMonda, 2021; Slade, 1987); whether infants succeed at implementing their attempted actions (e.g., Rachwani et al., 2020a, 2020b); which actions infants attempt and with which objects, and so on. For example, we did not distinguish among the objects of infant play, although unique objects provide different affordances for action.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…whether infants succeed at implementing their attempted actions (e.g., Rachwani et al, 2020aRachwani et al, , 2020b; which actions infants attempt and with which objects, and so on. For example, we did not distinguish among the objects of infant play, although unique objects provide different affordances for action.…”

Section: Unexpected Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants’ object interactions are long and complex during everyday joint engagement

Schatz

Suárez-Rivera

Kaplan

et al. 2022

Developmental Science

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As infants interact with the object world, they generate rich information about object properties and functions. Much of infant learning unfolds in the presence of caregivers, who talk about and act on the objects of infant play. Does mother joint engagement correspond to real-time changes in the complexity and duration of infant object interactions? We observed 38 mothers and their first-born infants (cross-sectional, 13, 18, and 23 months) during 2 h of everyday activity as infants freely navigated their home environments. Behavioral coding explored thousands of infant object interactions within and outside mother joint engagement. Object interactions involving exclusively simple play were shorter than complex play bouts. Critically, mothers' multimodal input (i.e., touching/gesturing toward and talking about the focal object) corresponded with more complex and longer play bouts than when mothers provided no input. Bouts involving complex play and multimodal input lasted 7.5 times longer than simple play bouts absent mother input. Moreover, "action-orienting talk" (e.g., "Twist it", "Feed dolly"), rather than talk per se, corresponded with longer bout duration and complexity. Notably, the association between joint engagement and play duration was not a function of mothers having more time to join. Analyses that eliminated short infant bouts and considered the timing of mothers' behaviors confirmed that mother input "extended" the duration of play bouts. As infants actively explore their environments, their object interactions change moment to moment in the presence of mothers' multimodal engagement.

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“…Instrumental behavior also brings about a substantial pragmatic profit (Alessandroni & Rodríguez, 2019), since it allows children to perceive and explore the world in innovative ways, which in turn leads to the creation of new possibilities for action and new forms of communication with others (Adolph, 2019; Lockman, 2005; Malafouris, 2020a). Despite the significance of tool use, important questions about how children learn to use everyday artifacts in ecologically realistic settings remain unanswered (Rachwani et al., 2020; Riede et al., 2021). One such question concerns the social nature of tool use development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The road to conventional tool use: Developmental changes in children's material engagement with artifacts in nursery school

Alessandroni

2022

Infancy

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The development of tool use in early childhood is a topic of continuing interest in developmental psychology. However, the lack of studies in ecological settings results in many unknowns about how children come to use artifacts according to their cultural function. We report a longitudinal study with 17 sociodemographically diverse children (8 female) attending a nursery school in Madrid (Spain) and their two adult female teachers. Using mixed‐effects models and Granger causality analysis, we measured changes in the frequency and duration of children's object uses between 7 and 17 months of age and in the directional influences among pairs of behaviors performed by teachers and children. Results show a clear shift in how children use artifacts. As early as 12 months of age, the frequency of conventional uses outweighs that of all other types of object use. In addition, object uses become shorter in duration with age, irrespective of their type. Moreover, certain teachers' nonlinguistic communicative strategies (e.g., demonstrations of canonical use and placing gestures) significantly influence and promote children's conventional tool use. Findings shed light on how children become increasingly proficient in conventional tool use through interactions with artifacts and others in nursery school.

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Children’s use of everyday artifacts: Learning the hidden affordance of zipping

Cited by 9 publications

References 12 publications

How mothers help children learn to use everyday objects

How mothers help children learn to use everyday objects

Infants’ object interactions are long and complex during everyday joint engagement

The road to conventional tool use: Developmental changes in children's material engagement with artifacts in nursery school

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