Cognitive development toys

Role of Play in Children 1-4 article on JSTOR

Great article for project!!!!! Lots of general information!

The key point that this article explores are that in order for a child to develop well mentally, numerous cognitive skills have to be taught; such as engagement, persistence and resistance to distraction=attention, memory and motor skills. Therefore in order to have a toy that benefits the child's cognitive development this toy has to have these components; visual object manipulation and memory. Then the article goes into case studies of how cognitive development is measured in pre-schoolers, such as problem solving. Furthermore they state that most of these cognitive development studies are inaccurate or inconclusive because they fail to measure the progress of children to adults. These studies also fail because when the cognitive memory tests are given; the child might score lower/show weaker memory or problem-solving skills because of being in an unfamiliar environment with strangers. Then the article goes into the actual studies and scientific/statistic details which are very dry and confusing. But overall this article was very helpful for our Cognitive Toy Design project because it listed the three aspects that are key in play and cognitive development.