The impact factor in infant development: Falling like a baby

What is the role of errors in infants’ acquisition of basic skills (e.g., walking) that require immense amounts of practice and input to become flexible and generative? We used infant falling as a model system to examine the impact of errors in infant development. We examined the severity of falls from parent reports of infants’ previous fall histories and a large video corpus (N = 563 falls) contributed by 138 13-, 15-, and 19-month-old infants during spontaneous activity in a laboratory playroom. Typical infant falls were low impact events: Only 21% of infants incurred a memorable fall at home, and during free play in the laboratory, infants rarely fussed, caregivers rarely showed signs of concern, and infants were back at play within a few seconds. Fall impact was consistently low across development and in various scenarios, including falling from small elevations. Impact forces were mitigated by infants’ small body size, effective reactive behaviors, and ability to arrest the fall to avoid head and torso impact. Infants showed little evidence that falling impacts learning: They were not deterred from walking, or from interacting with the objects and locations implicated in their falls. We speculate that a system that discounts the impact of errors in early stages of development encourages infants to keep practicing basic skills such as walking to the point of mastery.