Socioeconomic Status Affects Oral and Manual Exploration Across the First Year

Abstract

Oral and manual exploration are part of the foundation of problem solving and cognition in infancy. How these develop in an at-risk population, infants in poverty, is unknown. The current study tested exploratory behaviors longitudinally at 6, 9, and 12 months in infants from high- and low-socioeconomic (SES) families. Oral exploration consisted of passive and active mouthing and looks after active mouthing. Manual exploration consisted of frequency of fingering, rotating, and transferring the object. High-SES infants replicated the trajectory previously reported in the literature, showing a decrease in mouthing and fingering and an increase in rotating and transferring (e.g., Palmer, 1989). In contrast, low-SES infants showed no change in any of the manual exploratory behaviors over the first year, thus demonstrating reduced overall levels of exploration as well as a different developmental trajectory. Results are discussed in terms of attention, potential physiological mechanisms, and implications for later problem solving.

Socio‐economic Status (SES) Affects Infants' Selective Exploration

“…For surface exploration, low‐SES infants rubbed more, especially on the flexible surface. This was contrary to our hypotheses given that low‐SES infants generally show less exploration (Clearfield et al, ). Although the low‐SES infants demonstrated selectivity in rubbing the surface, rubbing the flexible surface may not be as conducive to learning about the surface as all of the other possible surface behaviours (pressing, picking and banging).…”

“…These infants show deficits in attention by 6 months and in the developmental trajectory of cognitive flexibility (Clearfield & Jedd, ; Lipina et al, ). Most relevant, low‐SES infants explored less and used less sophisticated exploratory behaviours than high‐SES infants by 12 months (Clearfield et al, ). In that longitudinal study of object exploration, low‐SES infants exhibited a reduction in the simple behaviour of mouthing across the first year but failed to replace that with other, more sophisticated exploratory behaviours, like rotating the object or transferring it from hand to hand.…”

“…Socio‐economic status does not just affect the amount of haptic exploration; one recent study suggests a different developmental trajectory in object exploration for high‐SES and low‐SES infants. In a longitudinal study of high‐SES and low‐SES infants' manual exploration, high‐SES infants decreased mouthing and fingering of an object over time and replaced these behaviours with more sophisticated exploratory strategies such as rotating and transferring (Clearfield, Bailey, Jenne, Stanger, & Tacke, ). In contrast, low‐SES infants did decrease mouthing but failed to replace this behaviour with the more sophisticated strategies, resulting in less overall exploration and less sophisticated strategies.…”

The Relation Between Socio-Economic Status (Ses) and Early Development: Empirical Findings and Theoretical Perspectives

“…Consequently, higher SES infants made the optimal choice by utilizing the sound producing properties of the interaction object-surface ( . Importantly, low SES infants by the age of 12 months not only engage less in exploratory behavior but also exhibit less sophisticated behavior compared to high SES infants (Clearfield et al, 2014). The same study also reported that by 12 months, low SES infants exhibited less mouthing behavior, but in the mean time did not utilize any sophisticated exploratory behaviors (i.e.…”

Identifying Pathways Between Socioeconomic Status and Language Development

“…Between the ages of 6, 9, and 12 months, infants from low-SES families demonstrated reduced overall levels of oral and manual object exploration (Clearfield et al 2014). Differences in early gesture production, known to predict later language learning (Rowe & Goldin-Meadow 2009a), also reflect SES disparities (Rowe & Goldin-Meadow 2009b).…”