The Connection of 2D and 3D Objects and Play Behavior in Infants

One of the biggest tasks faced by infants is learning language, including the names of many different objects (e.g., bottle, book). This is accomplished through a combination of hearing objects named by caregivers while infants look at and interact with (e.g., touch) objects. Previous developmental research has primarily examined object-name learning by presenting 2D images of objects on a screen as those objects' labels are said. Such studies show that hearing an object label impacts where we look (Barnhart et al., 2018) and that young infants can map heard labels to 2D images of the objects named (Barr, 2010). However, there is less research on how infants' looking at and hearing labels for 2D objects on a screen connects to infants' interactions with those real-world 3D objects. In this study, we aim to begin filling that gap. First, infants participated in an eye-tracking task in which they viewed 12 novel objects: 4 labeled target objects and 8 unnamed distractor objects. Infants (7.8 to 32.9 months old) were either exposed to the names of the target objects (experimental condition) or they were not (control condition). Next, infants participated in a video-recorded play session with the 3D printed versions of the 12 objects. I used DataVyu software to code the video data for how many times and for how long an infant touched each of the 12 objects. Once coding is completed, I will examine whether or not infants interact more with previously-named objects rather than non-named objects. This would indicate not only that infants can connect 2D images of objects to their real 3D counterparts, but also that naming objects may foster better infant learning.