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Learning Through Play

It’s a scene that many of us are familiar with–a young child receives a new gift, eyes sparkling, only to cast the toy hastily aside and investigate the wrapped box that it came in instead, crinkling up the paper and testing what will fit inside. While it may be frustrating for parents who have carefully deliberated over thoughtful birthday presents for their two-year-old, this type of spontaneous activity can serve as a window into children’s knowledge.

Our researchers, in collaboration with colleagues here at Northwestern, at the University of Washington, and at the American Indian Center of Chicago, wanted to find out how children’s free play with a forest diorama might be influenced by their culture and expertise with nature. The four-year-olds in the study came from urban Native American, rural Native American, and urban non-Native American communities. These communities were chosen to provide diversity, with the understanding that all children are influenced by a multitude of cultural and community factors. Children were presented with a forest diorama play set that was created especially for the research (a fixed surface with attached trees, other plants, and a pond, along with moveable animals and trees) and were simply asked to play with it.

The use of a forest scene rather than merely an assortment of animals and plants helped put the play into context, a consideration suggested by the Native American collaborators. This offered an opportunity to observe how children from each community engineered interactions in the natural world.

The researchers suspected that children would have animals engage in human activity, in light of how commonly books and media portray animals as human-like creatures (think of Anna Dewdney’s Llama Llama books or Richard Scarry’s characters.) They also hypothesized that children would have the animals engage in unrealistic behaviors, such as cows climbing up trees. Finally, they thought the children might just play with the animal figurines apart from the forest scene.

Researchers also wondered whether children might take the perspective of an animal, either talking for it (e.g., “I’m thirsty!”) or gesturing with their own bodies (e.g., flapping their arms like an eagle’s wings.) In addition, previous research has suggested that Native American children are less talkative than their non-Native counterparts, and the researchers were prepared to find similar results with this activity.

So, what did the researchers find? They discovered more similarities than differences between the communities, and some of their suspicions were not borne out. Children from all four communities were more likely to play with the animals in interactions that included the diorama than those that didn’t. They also very rarely had the animals engage in human-like activities, choosing instead to play with them more realistically, such as making a turtle glide through a pond rather than soar over trees.

There were also some differences between communities. Native American children were far more likely to take the perspective of animals than non-Native American children, which is supported by previous research that shows Native Americans are more likely to engage in perspective taking than non-Native Americans. And importantly, while previous researchers had concluded that Native Americans are less talkative than their non-Native peers, the rural Native American children participating in this activity were actually more likely to talk and act out activities with the diorama than children from the other two communities. This suggests that this activity reflects an engaging, relevant cultural context for the rural Native American children, who live in a forested area of Wisconsin.

So the next time you’re tempted to direct your child’s play, consider giving them the freedom to explore with an in-context play set. Sometimes, simple materials and time to explore are all your child needs in order to learn. And you might be surprised to see what your child knows!

Washinawatok, K., Rasmussen, C., Bang, M., Medin, D., Woodring, J., Waxman, S., Marin, A., Gurneau, J., & Faber, L. (in press). Children’s Play with a Forest Diorama as a Window into Ecological Cognition. Journal of Cognition and Development.