Caregiver-infant behaviours during multi-component object play are associated with infant visual working memory

Through play interactions, caregivers play a significant role in shaping children's early cognitive development. The over-arching objective of this cross-sectional study was to examine whether caregiver and infant behaviours in two types of play contexts that differed in the objects used, were associated with infant visual working memory. To address this, we collected video-recordings from 90 caregivers and 91 6-to-10-month-old infants while they engaged in a single object play (SO play) using single objects such as toy car, cup etc. and a multi-component object play (MO play) using organizational objects with multiple components such as stacking boxes, sorting towers etc. We coded caregiver intrusiveness, caregiver scaffolding, infant object engagement and infant distractibility during both contexts. Visual working memory was assessed at the same time in infants using a preferential looking task. Caregivers and infants showed more scaffolding and object engagement, respectively, during MO play compared to SO play. Further, caregiver intrusiveness, caregiver scaffolding and infant object engagement during SO play was positively associated with these respective behaviours during MO play. Finally, only behaviours during MO play were associated with infant visual working memory. Specifically, higher visual working memory was observed in infants who showed better object engagement and reduced distractibility and had caregivers who showed better scaffolding. These findings contribute to existing work on caregiver-infant dyadic interactions, by teasing apart differences in types of play contexts and examining the impacts on visual working memory in infants.