Manual object exploration and learning about object features in human infants

Motor activity is central both to cognitive and perceptual development in human infants and to learning in robots. Here we investigated how the quality of 6- to 7-month-old human infants´ (N = 60) manual activity with objects is related to their learning about objects in general. Infants´ object exploration during a toy play context was related to their learning of the features of dynamic audio-visual events. We found that not only was the amount of activity with objects predictive of infants´ learning, but the quality of their motor actions was related to what infants learned about audio-visual events. These findings extend previous work and begin to uncover how infants interact with objects can reflect their developing abilities to learn about objects in other contexts.