Cognition and Perception Commons^™

The Effect Of Parent Interaction On Pre-Reaching Infants’ Visual Attention During An Object Manipulation Task., Jalena N. Slaton

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Infants do not begin intentionally reaching for and grasping objects until around 5 months of age. The sticky mittens paradigm (SM) provides infants the opportunity to manipulate and explore objects on their own. Active SM experience has been shown to lead to positive cognitive outcomes (Libertus & Needham, 2010), including facilitating causal perception (Rakison & Krogh, 2012). While some aspects of SM that contribute to positive outcomes are well understood (e.g., active vs. passive experience), the role of parent interactions has received little attention. In this study, SM training was used to investigate the role that parents play in their …