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An infant repeatedly voices noises into a toy horn. When she puts the horn to her mouth and makes her usual ‘ooaaa, ooaaa’ sound, she does not hear what she expects. She repeats the sound to confirm. She looks into the mirror and sees an infant with a red horn at her mouth. Still looking, she stops making the noise. She moves the horn away from her mouth as she resumes making the sound. She opens up her mouth to change the character of her voice. Then she moves the horn back, and modifies the sound again, muffling the vowel tones. She identifies the tone change as the game and replicates the change using both her mouth and the horn’s placement. The infant is not only experimenting with what the horn can do to the sound, but what she can do to the sound. Once we begin to think about thinking, we can find better ways to support infant development.

Keywords: Infants, Child-Object, Cause/Effect, Modification, Exploration

Length of stand alone master video clip: 48 seconds