Variability in thirteen-month-old infants’ touching patterns in the sequential-touching task

Variability in infants’ touching patterns in a sequential-touching task was evaluated to examine the hypothesis that at periods of developmental transition, apparently random responding in this task actually reflects infants’ use of multiple strategies for responding to the categorical contrast. Typically, categorization in this task is inferred only if infants successively touch items within the same category. We assessed 30 infants’ touching patterns during a 10-min sequential-touching task. Half of the infants first received a familiarization task with the individual objects. There was a great deal of variation in touching patterns, as a result of infants both alternating touching items from the two categories and successively touching items within one category. Successive touching became more prominent as infants became familiar with the toys and task. Therefore, variability in touching patterns appears to reflect different strategies used in this task. The distribution of strategies also changed as infants became familiar with the toys and the task. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.