Caregiver-infant behaviours during multi-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 the current study was to examine whether caregiver-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 (SO) play using single objects such as toy car, cup etc. and a multi-object (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 in infants using a preferential looking task. Caregivers and infants showed more scaffolding and object engagement, respectively, during MO compared to SO. Further, caregiver intrusiveness, caregiver scaffolding and infant object engagement during SO was positively associated with these respective behaviours during MO. Finally, only caregiver-infant behaviours during MO 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 uniquely contribute to a large body of 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.