The Relationship Between Number Of Toys, Infant Distractibility, And Mothers’ Teaching Utterances
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship among the number of toys in an infant’s play environment, infant’s distractibility, and how often a mother teaches her infant during a play session. This study takes samples from videotapes of 12-month old children playing with their mothers during a 5 minute free-play situation. Twenty-two mother and infant pairs were selected for this study based on their previous participation in a language study. The measures used in this study were: (1) the number of maternal teaching utterances to her infant; (2) the total number of utterances that mother used during the playsession with the child; (3) the number of toys that were visible in the room; (4) the factors that distracted the infant during the play session; and (5) the type of toy the infant choses to engage with.