ArticleDevelopmental science2021
Communication changes when infants begin to walk.
Article in Developmental science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed.
- Developmental Trajectories of Emotional Availability Differ Between Dyads With Children With and Without Motor Delay.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant StudiesTrial
- Body position classification using wearable sensors in infants with cerebral palsy.Infant behavior & development · 2026Article
- Infants' Sleep Supports the Emergence and Mastery of Locomotor and Linguistic Skills.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- Developmental Trajectories of Locomotor Skills in Infants With Down Syndrome.Pediatric physical therapy : the official publication of the Section on Pediatrics of the American Physical Therapy Association · 2026Observational
- Everyday positioning experience in typically developing infants and infants with or at risk for cerebral palsy.Research in developmental disabilities · 2026Article
- Many Moving Parts: A Motor-Based Perspective on Developmental Speech and Language Research in Neurodevelopmental Disorders.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2026Article
- Social communication development in a contingent world: insights from autism.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Review
- A scoping review of responsive caregiving in diverse populations and its association with child development.Early human development · 2026Article
- Higher Intraindividual Gait Variability in Autistic Toddlers: A Pilot Study.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Human turn-taking development: A multi-faceted review of turn-taking comprehension and production in the first years of life.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Survey of Child Neurologists Highlights a Missed Opportunity for Identifying and Treating Motor Impairments in Autism.Pediatric neurology · 2025Article
- Social Context Matters for Turn-Taking Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Autistic and Typically Developing Children.Cognitive science · 2025Article
- Infant manipulation complexity trajectories as predictors of language outcomes at 2 years of age.Infant behavior & development · 2025Article
- Surveying the Perspectives of Parents and Professionals on Providing Upright, Hands-Free, Self-Initiated Mobility to Children with Severe Physical and Communication Disabilities.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Moment-to-moment cascades: Infants' real-time locomotor posture structures opportunities for joint object play with caregivers.Developmental psychology · 2025Article
- The Development of Turn-Taking Skills in Typical Development and Autism.Cognitive science · 2025Article
- Context Shapes (Proto)Conversations in the First Year of Life.Developmental science · 2025Article
- Environments "develop": Infant motor development can inform the study of physical space.New ideas in psychology · 2025Article
- Sitting Acquisition and Early Communication Development: Are There Associations in Very Preterm Infants at Six Months of Corrected Age?Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Caregiving relationships are a cornerstone of developmental psychopathology.Development and psychopathology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Learning to walk allows infants to travel faster and farther and explore more of their environments. In turn, walking may have a cascading effect on infants' communication and subsequent responses from caregivers. We tested for an inflection point-a dramatic shift in the developmental progression-in infant communication and caregiver responses when infants started walking. We followed 25 infants longitudinally over 7 months surrounding the onset of walking (mean walk onset age = 11.76 months, SD = 1.56). After learning to walk, the pace of gesture growth (but not vocalization growth) increased substantially, and infants increasingly coordinated gestures and vocalizations with locomotion (e.g., by walking to a caregiver and showing off a toy bear). Consequently, caregivers had more opportunities to respond contingently to their infants during walking months compared to crawling months (e.g., "What did you find? Is that your bear?"). Changes in communication were amplified for infants who began walking at older ages, compared to younger walkers. Findings suggest that learning to walk marks a point in development when infants actively communicate in new ways, and consequently elicit rich verbal input from caregivers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.