
Fewer toys at once may help toddlers to focus better and play more creatively - antman
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638317301613
======
jv22222
Yes, so true!

My wife is a Play Therapist with 2 masters degrees in the subject. The
organization of a play space with limited and well chosen toys is key.

Additionally if you give a child an electronic toy that lights up and makes a
lot of noise and does a specific thing, the kid will usually play with it
less, because they find their options are limited. Whereas, if you give a kid
a wooden spoon and a pot to play with they can find a 1001 uses for it!

She has a rule for herself to not have more toys than it would take to clean
up in 10 minutes.

Here is a talk she recently gave to parents at our pre-school. She talks about
this issue at the 33 min mark.

[https://playla.co/talk/1](https://playla.co/talk/1)

~~~
jerf
Does your wife have a solution for convincing relatives to stop buying tons of
electronic toys that light up and buzz for Christmas and birthdays?

~~~
thearn4
I've started a habit of sitting down with my son and taking them apart, screw
by screw, piece by piece. He loves tools so he's into it 100%. The louder,
brighter, and more annoying the y are, the more likely that they don't make it
back together.

~~~
itissid
I used to take apart electronics in my house all the time, watching my dad and
learning how to repair TV,toasters, VCRs etc. I was too young to remember how
much damage or good I caused. These days I cannot concentrate on a lot of
things, but repairing things is not one of them.

~~~
rjzzleep
i used to buy second hand VCRs in the thrift store(or something like that)
nearby to clean the heads. It took a while to understand than by cleaning them
the way I did I would damage them irreparably.

~~~
jacquesm
VCR heads are incredibly delicate. They are essentially coils of extremely
thin wire held together with a little bit of resin around a tiny mu-metal
core. Touch them from the wrong angle and they're already gone.

------
gpmcadam
This study is a little questionable.

A comment from /r/science:

    
    
        > Toddlers were taken to a room they had never been to 
        > before and were given at most 30 minutes to play with
        >  the toys. They switched toys more often when there 
        > were 16 vs. 4 toys and played with more toys overall.
        >  Duration of play will naturally be an inverse of that 
        > - and if the kids wanted to check out all the toys 
        > first before deciding to which one to use, which you 
        > would expect them to do in a new environment, that's 
        > naturally going to skew the statistics. The conclusion 
        > that they were more distracted by other toys in the 16 
        > toy condition is unsurprising since all the toys were 
        > novel. But it would seem rare that toddlers would be 
        > given 16 new toys all at once and it's certainly 
        > possible that if all the toys were familiar, they might 
        > engage for longer and more in-depth types of play with 
        > certain toys regardless of how many were present.
    

And also apparently the sample size was around 11 participants. Wouldn't jump
to the conclusion the headline of this article seems to draw just yet, without
further evidence.

~~~
jedberg
Yeah my anecdata backs this up. My kid has a ton of toys, but she only plays
with one or two a day, for quite a long time.

But when we go to her cousin's houses, she has to play with every toy for five
minutes. Same with when they come to our house.

~~~
rco8786
I’m on mobile so can’t link right now, but there’s actually a plethora of
research on this topic in he Montessori world of teaching that all comes to
the same conclusion.

------
bdamm
Isn't this just the pigeonhole problem in reverse? The _four toy_ group kids
played with individual toys longer perhaps because there were _fewer toys to
play with_. So... why would we be surprised with this result? Also, how does
it lead to the conclusion that this allows "better focus to explore and play
more creatively"? I'm not willing to pay the $40 to find out, did anyone do so
and can provide the magical answer for why the authors believe their result
shows anything about creativity or attention?

~~~
bunderbunder
Not quite. With 4 toys, kids could still switch toys just as frequently as
with 16 toys. They would just be expected to return to a toy after setting it
down in ~1/5 as much time under one possible null hypothesis.

No, it's not a big bang result. That is a _good thing_. For a long time,
psychology has had a real problem with studies whose reach exceed their grasp.
This study appears to me to be an example of exactly the kind of sober,
incrementalist work that we need to see more of in psychology. It takes a big
hypothesis ("giving kids a lot of toys is harmful to their attention span in
the long run"), picks a smaller sub-hypothesis off of it ("if kids have fewer
toys, their individual sessions with each toy will be longer") and then tests
just that bit. Like they suggest at the end of the abstract, this result
indicates that it would be sensible to proceed to the next iteration.

Call it "lean science" if a buzzword is necessary.

~~~
dopamean
> "if kids have fewer toys, their individual sessions with each toy will be
> longer"

I must be missing something. Isn't this obvious? One hour of play time / 16
toys is less time per toy then one hour of play time / 4 toys.

~~~
taejo
What requires that they play with all the toys in an hour? A kid with 16 toys
can play with each of them for 30 minutes at a time; a kid with 4 toys can
play with each of them for 15 minutes at a time. "Length of session" != "total
play time divided by number of toys"

~~~
Double_a_92
Btw all the toys were new to them. So probably they just spend a few minutes
with each to try it out. You're quicker if you only have to try 4 and pick
one.

------
prawn
My son attends an excellent preschool. Almost every day this year, the room
has been set out with activity tables that vary without repeat. Drawing,
painting, fossils, construction toys, etc. I cannot imagine the repository
they pull from to continuously provide such unique options.

At home, my children have more than enough toys, to the point that when
presented with the full set, they loll about listlessly and overwhelmed by
choice.

I've tried to follow the preschool's lead and select a few that are out at any
one time. I think it helps, and also makes for a quicker clean up.

We have a lot of incidental toys that are essentially rubbish; they get pulled
out and scattered around each play time without actually being played with.

------
nkoren
I wonder if/when they're going to make the connection between this and ADHD.
My suspicion is nothing scientific, just based on anecdotal observation, but
I've noticed that infants and toddlers who are surrounded by highly
stimulating colours, sounds, and movements seem to be accustomed to having
their attention TAKEN by whatever happens to be competing the most for it. As
opposed to infants and toddlers playing with plain wooden blocks, who
apparently become more accustomed to GIVING attention more intentionally.

I can't help but believe that this has long-term developmental effects.

~~~
grandalf
I think you could equivalently argue that the long-term effect is that the
toddler learns to tune out all the noise and focus on one thing.

~~~
dhosek
Which, surprisingly, is an element of ADHD behavior. Seriously. Apparently a
person with ADHD who in conversation is talking about A, if there's a
digression will be sure to get back to A to finish their disquisition on the
topic.

~~~
balabaster
Actually, having grown up with ADHD and having an ex and 2 daughters with ADHD
I can tell you this: We can _all_ hyper-focus on things of interest. But only
things that interest _us_. Attempting to get us to focus on things that are
meaningless to us, no matter how meaningful to you or the world at large, no
matter how important for our coursework or work, if they don't mean anything
to us, we have a much worse time than the average non-ADHD person focusing on
it.

I cannot say explicitly that all ADHD people have this trait, but having done
a lot of reading and attended a lot of counselling sessions on it to learn to
cope with children having it, it appears as though we're not alone in this.
It's fairly common for ADHD kids to be able to hyper-focus on topics of
interest.

My topic of interest from an extremely young age was figuring out how things
work, making them work and making them work better. It's no surprise therefore
that I ended up as a programmer.

------
cdubzzz
Full text available here:
[http://utdr.utoledo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1566&con...](http://utdr.utoledo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1566&context=graduate-
projects)

------
jansho
As kids, we were notorious for wanting all the toys from Argos catalogue then
play with the boxes only.

I often fancied the _idea_ of getting dolls. But Lego and papers were my true
playmates.

Yeah, kids - shiny outside, scruffy inside.

Though toys from car boot sales were awesome. They were often damaged and you
can break and chuck them around without parents getting too mad about it.
Shame, these days car boot sales are literally mechanical bits and pieces and
chipped crockeries...

------
heisenbit
I suspect this also applies to language features and API surfaces.

------
segmondy
Same things apply to adults.

Less open tabs, less open windows, Less monitors, less projects tend to make
one focus better.

------
postit
I believe this is a behavior trait human beings will carry all along their
lives.

I'm not a kid anymore and the more programming languages I try to play with,
leads to me the same state of lack of creativity and problem solving.

I could say that about overloading one with books, games and movies as well.

~~~
jjuel
I have this problem with most technologies. I was just getting somewhere with
one of my personal projects. Then all of a sudden I decided I needed to try
emacs. Now I am in a world of org and ledger and spacemacs. Trying to get
everything configured. Of course I will probably get about half way through
that and something new and shiny will catch my eye.

------
saulrh
This is an obvious exploration/exploitation optimization strategy. The child
doesn't have infinite time and has the same distribution for available time in
both cases. A larger estimated state space therefore dictates more aggressive
exploration, which means faster switching and slower settling. In more
intuitive terms, the child is trying to maximize their chance of getting to
play with everything, and while they don't know how much time they have, they
have no reason to assume it's enough, so they move faster to cover more toys.

Whether you think that this adaptation is a reasonable one, or whether these
are useful observations for a child to use to inform their expectations about
the world, I'm not sure I can say. But this _is_ the rational strategy under
straightforward assumptions about the utility function that our adaptations
approximate. Furthermore, I expect that I would observe identical behavior in
adults - for example, consider your takings at a buffet as a function of the
number of options and your familiarity with them - and in fact that a non-
negligible part of HN often exercises this same strategy consciously and
rationally.

------
CalChris
_No! Multi-tasking should start in the crib. How else is your bundle of joy
going to get into Harvard?_

------
cpfohl
I can confirm this is 100% true for my children. So much so that when I can
control the number of toys available to them (during quiet time in their
rooms, for example) I generally go with a small stack of books and one or two
toys (typically a Lego or Lincoln log type toy, and a puzzle).

I love when a study affirms something I'm doing...parenting usually feels like
educated guessing...

------
dorfsmay
One thing we did with our kids is take the toys that are left laying around
and put them in a cardboard box, away from them. After a few weeks, when they
run out of toys, we pull one of the cardboard box, and it's like Christmas for
them!

Another advantage is that some toys never make it out of the cardboard box,
you can donate/recycle them.

~~~
james-skemp
My SO's mom did this with her and her brother. They didn't have a lot of
money, so it helped in that regard as well. I think we're going to try it with
our son too.

------
gumby
On the electronic-vs-non-electronic toy front: I think it'e better to
characterize it as "toys that the child plays with" vs "toys that play with
the child".

There's a lot more exploration and, frankly, fun in the former.

But let's not forget, the child is not the toy manufacturer's customer: the
parent, grandparent, or parent of the birthday-party-invitee is the customer.
Toys are designed to appeal to _them_.

------
40acres
This makes total sense to me, I never had toys growing up. I used to use pens
and pencils as action figures (to this day I have a weird habit of having a
pen or pencil in my hand when doing mundane tasks at home) and also used to
use the plastic ties that would tie store bought bread (red and blue plastic
surrounding a thin wire that's pretty malleable) together as toys as well.

------
zoom6628
AFter decades of success science is backing up what Montessori has been doing.
I had 2 kids thru Montessory pre-school and gave them a big step up when
entering first year - and no i did not do any other math learning with them
outside of class. They both got assessed at being 2yrs ahead of standard on
math. if you have kids i cannot recommend Montessori enough.

------
MechEStudent
My 2 year old wanted just one Christmas present. I think that if I had not
been a "dumb American" and if I had played with her and the toy instead of
urging her to open another present, she would have been happy with one toy for
Christmas for years. Deeply satisfied, and blessed full.

------
MilnerRoute
I have a friend who does "12 days of Christmas." The idea being, why not have
something fun for almost two weeks, instead of just one massive dump of gifts
on the 25th.

Each to his own.

------
nitwit005
I'm a little suspicious they created a situation with a lack of emotional
attachment to the toys, because of a short duration. Many kids seem to glob
onto one or two toys as their favorite, prompting complaints from parents that
they don't play with the new toy they got them.

A lot of kids seem to end up with an extremely dirty and damaged doll that
they loved to death.

------
grigjd3
I wonder if the newness of the situation matters. At Christmas, my daughter
will open and play with all her gifts. Two months later, she'll play with some
toys more than others. I wonder if kids have a desire to try all the available
options when they haven't had a chance to experience them previously.

EDIT: or without regular availability.

------
api
This works for engineers too.

------
thrownblown
but can a child ever have enough legos?

~~~
amelius
The scientists would probably consider those lego blocks a single toy :)

------
jasonkostempski
I noticed this about a year ago watching my youngest play and tried to stop
getting out so much at once. Didn't figure it out in time for my oldest though
:)

------
deevolution
Lego ftw! Anecdotaly, Legos were the only toy that managed to hold my
attention because theres sn infinite number of things i could do with them.

------
peterjlee
Trying to build what I wanted with the limited Lego parts I had always forced
me to be more creative.

------
jsemrau
Boredom is one of the drivers of creative thought. I guess no surprises here.

------
valetinaramir
excellente la accion

------
valetinaramir
me encanta la pagina

------
jaequery
I'm pretty sure this applies to websites as well!

------
amelius
Just in time for Christmas! :)

------
dansman
Not only toddlers

------
timthelion
As much as the obvious reflex is to think that "oh we should move BACK to a
more austere, toy-less environment." It is important to remember, that
children that grow up in nature are surrounded by thousands of "toys". I
remember camping by creaks as a child, and finding there far more "toys" than
in my play box. Rocks, sticks, bushes, leaves, mud, bugs, animals. Somehow, I
still managed to focus for hours trying to damn the creak. So I don't really
believe that more toys = shorter attention span. It must be something about
the nature of these artificially created toys that makes them less engaging.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
If your childhood was anything like mine, you were probably trying to dam the
creek - no 'n'. Not that I'm judging you or there's anything wrong with a
young and free imagination that seeks to condemn the naiads to eternal
suffering.

~~~
timthelion
Oops. I was trying to dam it, not damn it.

------
eighthnate
Isn't this just tautological nonsense? This applies to everything. If you have
1 friend rather than 5, you can focus and be more creative with that 1 friend
than 5. If you have 1 sibling rather than 5, the same thing. If you have 1
book rather than 5, you can focus and read that one book.

Maybe we should have less schools and less "research" because so much of it
seems like useless busy body work to justify academics' salaries.

And of course, such topics like these are great because it latches onto the
simple-minded people's anecdotes as the comments here reflect.

------
marcofalcioni
i.e. Montessori was right all along.

~~~
jngreenlee
Came here to say this! My wife and I started a Montessori school together, and
this is fundamental.

ALSO, don't overly guide the child on 'how' to interact with a toy or object.
Let them figure it out and they'll come up with uses you didn't think of.

~~~
nsxwolf
Why are they so damned expensive?

~~~
sevensor
Why are all the other preschool options so cheap? Even Montessori-trained
preschool teachers are barely paid enough to scrape by, and it's not like the
schools are taking in enough cash to pay them more.

~~~
nsxwolf
Tuition at the Montessori school by me is $15,000 per child, per year. That's
crazy. Most families around here could never dream of affording that.

~~~
0xfeba
Where does all that money go...

~~~
sevensor
Say it's $15k per child per year, and we're talking about a preschool. That
means state mandated teacher ratios, depending on the state. Let's say it's
1:10, and that's on the low side. Suppose you have two classrooms of 20
children each. That means you take in 300k in tuition and you have to pay four
teachers plus at least one administrator. Knock off 100k for rent, overhead,
insurance, certifications, capital expenses. That leaves you with 40k for each
teacher's total compensation. How far does that go where you live?
Realistically, most preschools charge even less and pay their teachers
accordingly.

~~~
NLips
$15,000 per child per year * 2 classrooms * 2 children per class room =
$600,000 per year, not $300k.

Knocking off 100k for <foo> leaves 500k between the 5 staff, which is 100k
each.

~~~
0xfeba
So, more likely, 40k for the 5 teachers, and the remaining 300k going to
manager(s).

------
igorgue
The fact that I don't remember my mom ever buying us toys (dad was absent) I
can say that it does make you creative.

I remember getting a few broken GI Joe from my cousin, with those, I used a
screwdriver to pick up the good parts of them, and make good toys with weird
arms and legs. These were supposed to be garbage but as usually having less
stuff makes you more creative and I ended up with a few toys that nobody else
had!

