An over-abundance of toys may stifle toddler creativity

By Emma Young When my kids were toddlers, there were caches of easily-accessible toys in most rooms of our house. But perhaps I should have kept most of them stored away, and brought just a few out at a time, on rotation – because the results of a new study in Infant Behaviour and Development suggest that a toddler with few toy options not only spends longer playing with each one – presumably developing their attentional skills – but is also more creative in their play. Carly Dauch at the University of Toledo, US, and her colleagues studied 36 toddlers, aged between 18 and 30 months. The researchers drew from a pool of 32 toys of four types: educational toys (that teach colours, for example), “pretend” toys (that suggested themed scenarios – perhaps playing a being a doctor, for instance), action toys (that required an action such as stacking or building from the toddler, for example) and vehicles. The researchers videoed the toddlers taking part in two, 15-minute supervised play sessions: in one, they were in a room with one toy from each category (so four toys in total) and in the other, there were four from each category (so 16 in total).  The researchers found that when they presented the toddlers with 16 toys, the toddlers played on average with half of them during the assessment. In contrast, when they presented them with just four toys, the kids played on average with three.  Most importantly, the amount of toys available seemed to affect the way...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Developmental Source Type: blogs