Infant reaching and grasping: Frameworks for testing developmental cascades

The goal of this review was to highlight discoveries on infant reaching and grasping from research published between 2000 and 2025. We structured the review on two examples from the last quarter century where researchers introduced new approaches for investigating developmental change in infants’ reaching and grasping from the perspective of developmental cascades—processes by which changes in one domain influence abilities within or outside that domain. In the first example, we looked at the “micro” level of dissecting the components of developmental change as measured with the experimental paradigm sticky mittens. In the second example, we zoomed out to the “macro” level to identify different trajectories of change over developmental time from infant handedness. In both, we observed how earlier experiences can lead to different skills later in infancy. These approaches illustrate how developmental scientists can begin to test developmental cascades at different levels of analysis, and these examples have broader implications for methodological and conceptual decisions that all infancy researchers must make. For the next quarter century, we outlined research directions aimed at mechanistic questions to further test how infants’ reaching and grasping experience influences downstream developmental outcomes.