Developmental Changes in Children’s Object Insertions During Play

• In Event: Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Topic - Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Abstract

Visually examining and manipulating objects is a fruitful avenue of children’s learning. Studying children’s object play can highlight the intimate link between children’s play and the developmental trajectory of their cognitive skills. For example, manual object exploration is associated with the simultaneous development of advanced cognitive skills including mental rotation, 3D object completion, and language development (Möhring & Frick, 2013; Soska et al., 2010; Walle & Campos, 2014). Studies of children’s object insertions – such as placing a puzzle piece in an opening or a shape in a corresponding aperture on a shape sorter – reveal factors that may contribute to these associations by underscoring how children must coordinate their visual, perceptual, and motor systems at once in order to insert (Ossmy et al., 2020; Shutts et al., 2009). Importantly, most previous work has been conducted in the context of laboratory tasks with highly constrained sets of objects and apertures. However, much of the previous research in this area focused on highly constrained contexts, for example presenting infants with a limited number of objects or apertures, such as a box with interchangeable lids with only one opening each (Örnkloo & von Hofsten, 2007). This limited selection is not reflective of the diverse range of choices children encounter in everyday object fitting scenarios.

To address this gap, we studied children’s insertion of shapes into a shape sorter as an example of motor problem-solving with a diverse set of possible insertion combinations. The handling and insertion of six possible geometric solids into a commercially available shape shorter was observed in children between 12 and 48 months (N = 66). Children could insert the shapes into a top, round opening that did not require any specific spatial alignment for successful insertion, or they could insert the forms into their corresponding side opening, which is a more spatially and motorically difficult task. We evaluated children’s motor problem-solving (insertions) within a logistic mixed effects model framework and observed that the proportion of insertions into the open top of the toy decreased with age, especially between 24 and 30 months, (B = -1.2905, SE = 0.2080, z = -6.205, p < .0001). In addition, a higher proportion of older children’s insertions were successful compared to those of younger children (B1 = 1.3362, SE = 0.2928, z = 4.564, p < .0001), and children at all ages were more successful at inserting radially symmetrical shapes (e.g. circle) than non-radially symmetrical shapes (i.e. trapezoid) (B2 = 2.4167, SE = 0.2898, z = 8.341, p < .0001). These results provide two new insights about the early emergence of children’s spatial abilities in this type of motor problem-solving task. First, children do not demonstrate a clear goal of inserting geometric solids into their corresponding aperture until they are approaching their second birthday, and second, once children demonstrate this behavior, success is higher for radially symmetrical solids. The current results contribute more broadly to our understanding of the development of how children approach motor problem-solving in naturalistic, open-ended scenarios.

Authors

• Valerie Patrice Bambha, Cornell University
  Presenting Author

• Eunice Yiu, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nikita Shetty, University of California, Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Aaron Gerald Beckner, University of South Carolina
  Non-Presenting Author

• Annika Voss, University of California - Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jinlin Xie, University of California, Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Vanessa Lobue, Rutgers University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lisa M Oakes, University of California - Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marianella Casasola, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author