Both fathers and mothers successfully engaged their infants one to six months of age in interactive games in a laboratory play situation. Both parents played almost one game per minute with their infants. Mother played more conventional limb movement games and more distal, visual, attention maintaining games while fathers played more proximal, arousing, idiosyncratic limb movement games with their infants. Interactive games with parents even during the first six months of infancy provide differential experiences for the infant. These games may have developmental significance in selectively facilitating the acquisition of social and cognitive skills.
Recent studies of parent-infant social interaction have demonstrated that fathers as well as mothers can establish a direct social relationship with their infants. Father's sensitivity as a social interactant', * and his salience as an attachment figure3* ' with his infant has been well-documented. Attention now is focused on specifying the qualitative and structural aspects of father-infant interaction in order to understand the ways in which father and infant influence each other.
Play appears to be a useful context within which to study the influences of parents and infants on each other. Play between parents and infants is not only a pleasurable social activity but may also be the context in which a large number of social and cognitive skills are learned.5 Play between mothers and young infants has been extensively described and analyzed6*' and studies of play between fathers and older infants (8-30 months of age) have suggested differences in the amount and kinds of play fathers and mothers engage in with their infants: fathers engaging in more physical, idiosyncratic play and mothers engaging in more conventional
In this paper, play between fathers and young infants (1-6 months of age) was studied and compared with play