| Abstract: | In this research, 12.5- and 9.5-month-old infants’ use of information about the composition of a display to guide their actions on the display was examined. The display was composed of two pieces that were either glued together (the one-object display) or not (the two-object display). At the beginning of the session, the composition of the display was revealed to the infant and then the display was placed on the table within the infant’s reach. When resting on the table, these two versions of the display were indistinguishable. The results showed that the 12.5-month-old infants reached with one hand after they had experience with the display as a single object, and with two hands if they had experience with the display as two separate objects. The 12.5-month-old infants also placed their grasps differently depending upon the experienced composition: infants who experienced a single object tended to distribute their reaches evenly along the display, whereas infants who experienced two separate objects placed their reaches toward the outer ends of the display, avoiding the boundary between the two pieces. In contrast, the 9.5-month-old infants reached with one hand for both the one-object and the two-object displays, and their reaches did not show a difference in the distribution pattern that could be traced back to the infants’ prior experience with the composition of the display they were grasping. |
