Infant Behavior During Sticky Mittens Training: What It Can Tell Us About Infant Learning

Abstract

Infant exploratory behavior is critical for stimulating proper development and has implications on numerous developmental domains. The sticky mittens paradigm has been shown to enhance object exploration skills in infants, although the mechanism of this effect is unclear. The present study examines a short, 8-10 minute sticky mittens training session under conditions with more or less auditory feedback from the experiment conducted by Needham et al. (2017), focusing attention on interactions between the experimenter and infant. To best scaffold the infant’s learning during training, analysis of data reveals that the experimenter must closely observe the infant’s latency of toy contact and momentary looking behavior to provide the adequate number and timing of prompts. Results further illustrate that integration across multiple sensory modalities is an effective facilitator of infant object manipulation and learning during training sessions, especially when infants can see the success of actions that stem from their own hand.