Infants' instrumental use of their mothers to achieve their goals.
In order to investigate very young children's active contribution to managing interaction with others, we examined 6-13-month-old infants' instrumental use of their mothers to reach goals. We examined the idea that infants are already involved at 6 months in managing interaction with adults, with rapidly increasing instrumental use of mothers between 6 and 13 months. 64 mother-infant pairs were videotaped during structured episodes in which the investigator instructed the mother to challenge the infant to use her instrumentally to get access to or to work a toy. Already at 6 months of age, infants used their mothers instrumentally in 36% of the episodes. The amount of infants' instrumental use of their mothers increased to 67% of episodes at 9 months and continued increasing to 78% of the episodes by 13 months. These results suggest early and rapid development of infants' management of joint activities from as early as the middle of the first year of life.
Mosier
C E
CE
University of Utah.
Rogoff
B
B
D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D011340:Problem Solving; D015203:Reproducibility of Results