The Development of Object Construction From Infancy Through Toddlerhood

Abstract

Early in development, children explore and combine objects in increasingly complex ways. One manual skill, object construction, represents a major shift in how objects are explored relative to other objects. Despite recent connections with cognitive functioning such as spatial skills, the development of object construction ability has rarely been studied and its trajectory has not been adequately described. The purpose of this study was to describe the development of three types of object construction (stacking, nesting, and affixing) across 5 monthly infant visits and 7 monthly toddler visits using a longitudinal design and a large sample size. Infants (10–14 months, n = 131) and toddlers drawn from the infant sample (18–24 months, n = 65) were given sets of age‐appropriate toys each of which elicited at least one type of constructive play. We described success at different construction tasks and identified trends for construction skill for infant and toddler development using multilevel modeling. We found that each of the three construction actions developed in unique ways across the 10‐ to 24‐month period. Infant construction skill predicted the development of toddler skill, but toddler construction skill diverged from infant trajectories. We discuss the role of combination strategies in the development of object construction skill and how object construction could be related to other domains of development.

Early, concurrent, and consistent hand preferences predict stacking in toddlerhood

“…Given the increase in stacking from the infancy to toddlerhood reported by Marcinowski et al. (2019), this period now seems vital for understanding the group differences by age and in the rate of stacking development observed in the present study. During this age period, children have been reported to improve their problem‐solving skills (McCarty et al., 1999).…”

“…Stacking task (18-24 months; Marcinowski et al, 2019) The toddler stacking task used three sets of stacking toys: 1 in. cubic blocks (10 items; presented once), 2 in.…”

From Hemispheric Asymmetry through Sensorimotor Experiences to Cognitive Outcomes in Children with Cerebral Palsy

“…Gradual de-coupling of the two hands enables the sophisticated, role-differentiated bimanual manipulation of objects, which allows a child to learn object properties and affordances, means-end relations between objects, and motor planning skills, later used for the execution of complex, finely timed action sequences in means-end problem solving, artifact construction, and tool-use [175,184,186,[439][440][441][442]. Importantly, multimodal, goal-directed object exploration reportedly advances children's language and cognitive development [231,295,[442][443][444][445][446][447][448][449][450][451][452][453][454].…”

“…In children with CP, early deficits in postural control impede the development of nonobject-oriented exploration and reaching (non-object-oriented behaviors are exploratory behaviors of one's own body and surrounding objects in the absence of portable objects and people (e.g., head control against gravity, midline position of the head and hands, open hand posture, looking at hands, mouthing hands, touching own body or surfaces, etc. [166]), which, in turn, may result in limited opportunities to manipulate objects and explore the world [433,438,456], establish hand-eye coordination [433,[458][459][460], and practice visuospatial skills [441]. In children with CP, delayed visuospatial abilities might concatenate into learning difficulties, impaired non-verbal and verbal intelligence, and difficulties in the acquisition of mathematical and executive function skills [19,22,27,347,377,394,406,461].…”

Transferable and Adaptable Driving Behavior Prediction

“…An easy example can be found when a child learns to build a tower with blocks. Usually, the child would divide the overall task into a sub-task of searching for proper blocks and a sub-task of cautiously placing the blocks on the tower (Marcinowski et al (2019); Spelke and Kinzler (2007)). In the high-level searching task, the child would care about the shape or weight of the blocks, but in the low-level placing task, the child would essentially pay attention to subtly adjusting the position and angle of the block.…”