The ecology of infants' perceptual-motor exploration

The first goal of this article is to review recent advances in understanding how new motor skills facilitate infants' exploration-the active acquisition of information about their environments. New postural abilities, such as sitting and walking, qualitatively change how infants can learn about objects, places, and people with potential downstream effects on infants' later cognitive and linguistic development. What's missing, however, is a characterization of how new exploratory abilities change infants' everyday experiences. Presumably, changes in opportunities for learning mediate the downstream effects of posture on other developmental achievements. Accordingly, the second goal of this article is to discuss the importance of measuring the ecology of infants' everyday experiences and how they vary.