Learning About Camouflage Through Play During Early Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

During early childhood, children develop an understanding of biology through many informal learning opportunities. For example, research has suggested that shared picture book reading is an informal learning opportunity that can be an effective tool in teaching children about the fundamental biological concept of camouflage (Ganea, Ma, & DeLoache, 2011). Guided play (i.e., child-directed play containing adult scaffolding) can serve as another informal learning opportunity (Weisberg, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2013), but the effectiveness of guided play for early science learning has yet to be fully investigated. The current study aimed to understand the effectiveness of guided play in comparison to didactic instruction for teaching preschool-age children about camouflage. This study also investigated how individual differences may influence how children learn from different approaches.

In this study, 54 3- and 4-year-old children had the opportunity to learn about the concept of camouflage by interacting with various animal figures and environment placemats. Some of these animal figures were able to camouflage with the environment placemats and some were not. Children’s baseline understanding of camouflage was measured. Then, children were given the opportunity to learn about camouflage through either guided play or didactic instruction. Children in the guided play condition were allowed to move the animal figures around the environment placemats freely and the experimenter scaffolded children’s discovery of camouflage. Children in the didactic instruction condition were told where to place the animal figures on the environment placemats while the experimenter explained how camouflage works. Children also completed the NIH Toolbox Picture Vocabulary Task (PVT) to measure verbal intelligence and the Head Toes Knees Shoulders (HTKS) task to measure executive function skills. Finally, all children completed a post-test measure to gauge whether learning about camouflage differed depending on condition. During the post-test measure, children were asked to choose which animals predators would eat and place animals where they would be safe from predators. Children were also asked to explain why the animals would be safe or be eaten.

Guided play was expected to be a more effective strategy for young children’s learning about camouflage than didactic instruction. Results showed that overall children improved in camouflage understanding from pre- to post-test (t(52) = -7.24, p < .001; see Figure 1), but there were no significant differences in children’s learning by condition (F(1,52) = .004, MSE = 9.29, p = .952). Further, results demonstrated that children who were higher in age (r = .30, p = .026), PVT (r = .45, p = .001), and EF (r = .40, p = .002), were better able to correctly justify why a particular animal did or did not camouflage. Overall, results from this project suggest that guided play does not seem to be a more effective teaching tool for learning about camouflage than didactic instruction. In addition, results suggest that individual differences in young children can have significant impact on children’s learning about biology. Implications and ideas for future research will be discussed.

Authors

• Kaitlin Rose Sands, University of Texas at Dallas
  Presenting Author

• Katharine Harris, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shreya Balamurali, University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristen Damico, University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jyothika Kumar, The University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Candice Mills, The University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author