Infant Special Education: Interactions with Objects

Nonhandicapped infants exhibit a number of manual strategies in their explorations that are suited to examining the salient aspects of particular objects. With maturity, simple strategies, such as mouthing, are replaced by more complex behaviors, such as fingering object surfaces, transferring objects from one hand to the other, and rotating the object with both hands. High-risk pre-terms exhibit the complex strategies less than full-terms and low-risk pre-terms. Object manipulation at 9 months predicted Bayley Mental Scale scores at 24 months. Suitable interventions can enhance the development of manipulation skills. The earliest play involves learning to manipulate objects. As infants handle objects they increase their understanding of the world; in a sense, they build their sensorimotor intelligence with their hands. In this article we discuss the strategies children use for interacting with objects during the first year of life and the manner in which this information can help developmental specialists who work with infants