Mix and Match

This next article is called Parts and Relations in Young Children's Shape-Based Object Recognition. In this study, Augustine et al., propose that children ages 18-30 months use "separate information about object part shapes/relations" to recognize either familiar or novel items. They test this by seeing if the children were able to successfully group novel objects by shape and by "relation" (functional similarities). in their first experiment. The results stated that children were successful in separating the novel objects by shape by not so much by relation. In contrast, in the second experiment, where children were asked to separate familiar objects using the same paradigm as the first experiment, the children were able to separate the objects both by shape and relation. This phenomenon increased in accuracy as age increased.


This backs up the idea that younger children view the world more holistically (being able to separate objects by shape) rather than with a more detailed view (separating by relation). It is also neat to note that this process of grouping becomes stronger with more familiar objects, this just goes to show that repeated exposure to new things does help to strengthen the learning process.



#TODDLERTIP... I'd like to share with you something my mom did for me. She would always by me flashcards where I'd have to put all the birds "in the nest" and memory games where you have to match the items and remember where they were. And looking back they weren't just educational they were pretty fun too!

























References

Augustine, E., Smith, L. B., & Jones, S. S. (2011). Parts and relations in young children's shape-based object recognition. Journal of Cognition and Development, 12(4), 556-572.


https://www.montessorimom.com/memory-matching-game/

https://engagingtoddleractivities.wordpress.com/category/subject/math/charts-and-graphs/