Sticky Mittens

Social interactions, by definition, would seem to be fundamentally about people: eyes and facial expressions, speech and gestures, self-consciousness, projections and deception. So when I think of the science of social development, studies of face perception, eye contact, joint attention and moral dilemmas are the ones that come to mind.But could the key to social development lie in motor development, and in an infant's early interactions with non-social objects?That's the premise of a new study, published 9 September in Developmental Science. The researchers showed that reaching for and actively playing with toys can boost young infants' interest in faces.Read more at...SFARI, October 2011.