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Category: Project

Description: We examined the relation between 4- and 12- month old infants’ (N = 107) motor development and visual preference for handled or non-handled objects, using Lookit (lookit.mit.edu) as an online tool for data collection. Parents reported their infant’s motor behavior in the last week, and infants viewed 8 pairs of objects. Each pair contained one item with an easily graspable “handle-like” region and one without. Infants’ duration of looking at each item was assessed. Controlling for low level image properties such as object salience and size, overall, infants looked longer to handled items than non-handled items, although this preference was most pronounced in the most motorically advanced infants. Additionally, by examining the duration of infants’ individual looks, we show that these preferences change over the course of the 8-s trials. These findings confirm infant visual preferences can be successfully measured using Lookit and that motor development is related to infants’ visual preferences for items with a graspable, handle-like region.