Teaching to the Toy: Caregivers and Toddlers Interact Differently With Challenging Toys to Support Learning

• In Event: How Children Learn the Everyday Designed Artifacts of their Culture

Abstract

Children are surrounded by objects with culturally-specified uses in daily life. Many of these objects are toys with particular associated actions. How do young children learn to perform these actions on toys? Caregivers are young children’s first teachers, yet little is known about how caregivers support their children’s toy learning. In addition, toys vary on a number of dimensions, which might affect children’s engagement. Toys can have defined end states or more open-ended goals. In addition, toy actions can be more or less clear. Across two studies, we tested how caregivers supported their toddlers’ learning of toys that varied by end state and action clarity.

In Study 1, caregivers taught 32 22- to 26-month-olds (mean age = 23.4 months; 17 male) to use two sets of novel toys: blocks and figures. The blocks had many possible end states, with non-obvious actions to assemble the goal. The figures had clear end states with non-obvious actions. In Study 2, caregivers of 46 22- to 26-month-olds (mean age = 23.4 months; 21 male) taught their toddlers to use a more familiar puzzle toy. The puzzle had both a clear end state and more apparent actions (Figure 1). In both studies, caregivers were told to teach their toddlers to assemble each toy to reach a specific end state in whatever way felt natural. Toddlers were then tested on their independent toy reconstruction abilities (learning). We coded caregiver and toddler toy actions and caregivers’ verbal guidance. Activity and guidance were then related to children’s learning. We tested whether children engaged differently with each toy, whether caregivers’ support of children’s activity varied by toy, and whether children’s own activity supported their learning.

Children were more active and caregivers offered more action-relevant speech and praise with the puzzle compared to blocks and figures (ts > 2.15, ps < .05; Figure 2). Across all toys, children who were more active learned more (B = 0.35, p = .037; Figure 2). Although active experience benefitted learning, toy type influenced how caregivers supported children’s activity. When caregivers offered more action-specific utterances, children were more active on the blocks; this relation was not seen with the other toys (B = .011, p = .017). In contrast, caregiver praise was related to more child activity on all toys (B = .021, p < .001; Figure 2). In sum, toys with different end states and action opacity generated different levels of child activity and caregiver coaching, though active experience was pivotal for learning all toys. It is possible that when toys are challenging, specific instructions boost child activity, whereas praise may relate to more activity regardless of toy difficulty. These possibilities will be explored in ongoing analyses of caregiver coaching. This research enhances our understanding of how caregivers support toddlers’ learning of culturally-designed toys of different difficulty levels in everyday teaching settings.

Authors

• Natalie Brezack, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Sarah Elizabeth Pan, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda Woodward, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author