Why is discovery play important

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Pressing this button emitted a cartoon-like sound effect. The experimenter introduced the lightbox, explained that the lights come on when the buttons are pressed, and demonstrated this to the child. Initially, no light caused any other light to activate. Children were asked to turn on each light to ensure that children knew the color names, and would recognize that pressing the corresponding button would activate the light of the same color.

All children in the final analysis answered these questions correctly. The experimenter then surreptitiously reprogrammed the box such that the red light activated the green light, and the yellow light activated blue. Children were shown the side button, which was pressed, emitting a cartoonish sound. In the puzzle, some lights make other lights go. Let me show you. Let's press the red button. The experimenter narrated the results and then pressed the green button, which resulted in only green activating.

This was also described to the child. The experimenter then asked the child six causal structure questions. Specifically, children were asked whether red caused green and green caused red, whether yellow caused blue and blue caused yellow, and then two other questions about light pairs determined randomly.

If children answered any of these questions incorrectly, corrective feedback was given. Children were told that they would try to learn new puzzles. The order in which children learned the two models was counterbalanced. Two particular configurations of colors for each model were used counterbalanced across children. Representations of the causal structures children were asked to learn across the experiments. A Shows the common cause model and B shows the chain model.

In the experiment, all four lights were present, so there was also a fourth light D that did not have any causal influence. Children could intervene on the box for as long as they liked, but they had to press each button at least once, and press all the buttons at least 15 times total note — they did not have to press each button 15 times; rather, the total number of button-presses had to exceed When children indicated they were finished and they had made more than 15 button-presses — if not they were encouraged to keep playing , the experimenter brought the lightbox over to his side of the table and pressed each button exactly one time.

During this demonstration, he narrated the efficacy of that button press e. These children were given the same procedure as those in the discovery condition, but in reverse order.

These children were given the same demonstration by the experimenter i. We ran this condition to ensure that any difference between the discovery and confirmation conditions was because of the benefit of discovery, as opposed to children in the confirmation condition learning from the observation, but becoming distracted by the free play or being less motivated to act because they thought they learned from just the demonstration. If either of these were the case, we would expect accuracy in this condition to be superior to that of the confirmation condition.

In contrast, if discovery benefits learning, then accuracy in this condition should be similar to accuracy in the confirmation condition, and less accurate than the discovery condition.

Critically, in this condition, we used the same language to describe what the experimenter was doing so that the child would learn the puzzle. After the free play or demonstration, children in all three groups were then asked a set of causal structure questions to assess how accurately children had learned the relations among the lights.

We asked eight questions for each model: concerning the two direct causal relations, those two causal relations in reverse, two questions involving the fourth light, which was not involved in the model, and two questions looking at the indirect causal links between lights in the model.

These questions were asked in a random order, different for each child. This ensured that children were not simply parroting back an answer, so that results were more likely representative of the child's representation of the causal structure. Five children were replaced for this reason. In the procedure for the chain model in this experiment, the indirect structure question is ambiguous the data are consistent with both responses.

It was not included in the analysis see Results for details. Children required corrective feedback on 8. This suggests that children recognized the basic structure of the task.

Proportion of causal structure questions answered correctly on common cause and chain model across the learning conditions. Standard deviations shown in parentheses. Responses to the ambiguous causal structure question in the chain model are not included in this table.

All analyses reported in the text are on arcsin transformations of these data. Model was a within-subject factor and condition was a between-subject factors. No significant interactions were found. No significant differences were found between children in the confirmation and observation conditions.

Simple effect analysis also considered the difference between the models across each condition individually. We also analyzed performance compared with chance responding. These data suggest that discovering the efficacy of actions influences causal learning beyond confirming the results of another's actions, but do the actions children generate between these conditions differ?

Further, do those action patterns relate to children's accuracy across the learning conditions? To address these questions, we analyzed whether children's free play i. Because free play was unconstrained, children often pressed multiple buttons at the same time, or pressed one button while holding another down, resulting in confounded data. Two research assistants, unaware of the experimental hypotheses, transcribed videotapes of intervention sequences.

Agreement was determined in two manners: whether they agreed on the total number of button presses, and whether they agreed on the total number of individual button presses unconfounded interventions. The first author resolved all disagreements without knowing whether each child was in the discovery or confirmation condition. First, we examined the total number of interventions made by the child i. Summary of children's interventions in the discovery and confirmation conditions.

We next examined whether the number of unconfounded interventions i. We next considered whether children chose to generate data in a structured manner. Our first measure of structure was whether children simply pressed the same button repeatedly, as opposed to making an intervention on one button and then a different one.

As an example, pressing the red button six times in a row, then the yellow button, and then the green button five times would be scored as two runs one on red, another on green. Second, we considered the actual number of times children pressed buttons repeatedly.

In the example above, the two runs would equate to nine repeat button presses i. Because these data are confounded with the total number of unconfounded interventions children generated, we analyzed the proportion of those interventions that were repeated.

No difference was found on the common cause model. Four-year-olds whose actions discovered the efficacy of events in a causal system were more accurate at learning causal relations than children whose actions confirmed the efficacy of another's actions, or children who just observed another person act on the machine. Even though children in the discovery and confirmation conditions were allowed to engage in free play with the lightbox for as long as they wanted, their ability to demonstrate what they had learned from those interventions differed.

The effect of discovery on causal learning does not appear to be an artifact in our comparison between the discovery and confirmation condition. For instance, it could be that children were more interested, and thus more engaged by, the task in the discovery condition than the confirmation condition. We cannot explicitly rule out this possibility, but aspects of the procedure and results speak against this conclusion.

First, it is not clear that a single demonstration of each button would result in less engagement overall, particularly because at least for the causal chain , the exact causal structure was not specified by just observing these data.

Second, because children in the discovery condition were required to observe the experimenter activate each button after their free play period, they could also have become unengaged by this observation. Finally, if engagement is driving our results, then one would expect children to be more accurate when they can play with the lightbox than when they just watched. However, there was no difference in performance between the confirmation and observation conditions.

This null result in light of the positive result between the discovery and confirmation conditions is hard to explain if engagement with the task is solely driving the difference between the discovery and confirmation conditions. A similar concern with concluding that discovery aids children's causal learning is that children in the confirmation condition might have believed that they learned the causal structure after the experimenter's demonstration, and then forget those causal relations during the free play period.

Children might have also become distracted by the free play task in the confirmation condition, and forgotten the demonstration they observed. Neither of these concerns appears to be warranted; if they were, then children would not have shown any difference between the discovery and observation conditions.

Moreover, few aspects of the nature of children's own action affected their ability to learn the models, and no aspect of the data that we analyzed affected learning across both of the models. A point we have not emphasized is that learning across all the conditions, and especially the two in which children were allowed to generate their own interventions, was quite accurate. We draw two conclusions from these results. First, children appeared to understand the novel causal system we presented.

This might be unsurprising, given that there are many investigations in which children reason about various novel causal systems e. But it is rare that the causal system about which children must reason has conflict with their authentic causal knowledge; there are few instances of lights causing other lights to activate.

Some have suggested that children's inferences are different in this circumstance e. However, in our procedure, children received much direct instruction about the causal system, in which both buttons caused lights to activate as well as other lights. Perhaps this familiar knowledge helped to bootstrap children's understanding. We encourage you to visit our Discovery area with your child.

Use every opportunity to introduce new vocabulary as they touch, taste, hear, smell and look at inanimate objects and living things. Encourage them to describe what they are doing. Help your child gain knowledge of print by recording their experiences and discoveries on charts. Help your child explore literacy as a source of enjoyment by reading aloud stories related to discovery topics.

Help them understand one-to-one correspondence, for example, by having them plant one seed in each container or feed each rabbit one carrot. Help your children discover patterns and relationships as they observe the life cycle changes of a butterfly.

Encourage them to find patterns in natural items found on a walk such as the scalloped edges of a leaf or ridges on a pinecone. Have your children create patterns with items or line up rocks from the smallest to the largest. Support measurement skills by providing tools such as measuring cups, timers, measuring spoons, tape measures, and balance scales for your child to use in their explorations.

Ask probing questions as they explore whether a ball will roll down a ramp more easily than a plastic egg of the same weight. To help your child understand spatial relationships, describe how the gerbil runs around the cage, hides in the bedding, or scampers out of the cage.

Help them learn how to observe, collect information, make predictions, and then experiment. Teach your child about life science by discussing how plants and animals live, grow, and move. Help them develop an understanding of the differences between living and nonliving things.

Lead them to discover more about their own body by looking at their fingerprints under a magnifying glass or by listening to their heart with a stethoscope. Introduce concepts about physical sciences by playing with balls, ramps, pulleys, and magnets. Ask questions to stimulate thinking about how and why things move. Introduce concepts about Earth and the environment by including rocks, shells, and other natural items into their play.

Encourage your child to learn about space and geography by using positional words while they are making discoveries.