Opportunities for verb learning: Objects, infant locomotion, and verb input.

Infants engage with a variety of objects in their environments that offer unique opportunities for action and learning. This study experimentally tested 3 hypotheses: (1) Different objects instigate different types of infant action, and (2) caregivers offer contingent verb input, such that (3) infants' actions temporally align with caregiver verb input. Thirty infant-mother dyads (12-22 month-old, 14 girls, 21 White, 4 Black, 2 Asian, 3 Hispanic, 3 Multiracial) played in two conditions-with gross-motor toys to incentivize locomotor play and fine-motor toys to incentivize stationary play. As hypothesized, infant locomotion and caregiver verb use differed by condition. Moreover, infants' in-the-moment locomotion temporally aligned with caregivers' verbs. Effects ranged from η2 = .416-.778. Findings provide experimental evidence that objects for play shape infant actions and caregiver verb input.