Abstract
The purpose of this assignment was to analyze how the particular modern toy can influence the development of social, emotional, cognitive, motor skills of infants. We included the detailed description of the toy titled “Learning Letters Mailbox” in the paper and discussed different opportunities proposed by this toy for children play.
After analyzing and discussing all listed questions, we came to conclusions that the toy has the variety of different functions, and the toy can be attractive and exciting for a child`s attention, influence development of some infants` skills. However, despite many advantages of the toy, it is not so efficient and beneficial for babies` development as it can be expected by parents and pronounced by producers of similar toys. This toy, probably, will be more beneficial for children under the age of three years and older.
Key words: biological development in infancy, socioemotional development in infancy, cognitive development in infancy, toys, motor skills.
Description of the Toy
I chose the toy named Learning Letters Mailbox. This Mailbox aimed to help children to learn letters, numbers, colors, greetings and more. There are three toy-letters and one parcel in the set. By scrolling the roller, a baby can learn all about the numbers. By lifting shutter on the mailbox, a child will hear music and a variety of phrases. The toy looks like a mailbox where you can throw letters. Children may also open the toy mailbox and take out the letters. When a child opens the mailbox, he/she can hear the word “Open”.
Near the place where a child can throw toy cards, on the top of the toy mailbox, a child also can see the toy bird. The bird is fixed in such way that a child can make the bird move by touching it. Also, when the bird begins to move it says “Hi, dear!”.
There are two modes of the toy – learn and music modes. Both learning and music modes include the singing of songs. When you activate the learn mode, a child has an opportunity to hear some simple words like “down”, “up”, “opened”, “closed”, etc. Also, a child can hear how the voice from a toy counts from 1 to 10 and sings the alphabet. So the purpose of the learning mode is to teach a child to speak, to count, etc.
After the description of the toy, we will describe how the toy can influence infant`s development in social, emotional, biological and cognitive dimensions. However, before we discuss how the toy can affect listed dimensions of development we need to indicate what main changes occur in a child`s development in the period of infancy.
Infancy is the age period which continues from the birth of a child till the age of 12 months. However, some authors define infancy as the period which begins in the first month of life and continues until the age of two years. The first years of a child`s life and a development of a child in infancy can influence the development of his/her individuality, cognitive abilities, traits, etc. significantly. So parents must pay considerable attention to facilitate a development of their babies during the period of infancy.
Biological analysis of the toy
The toy we chose for the study can influence the development of some motor skills of an infant. Motor skills of a child can develop when he/she throws the toy letter in the mailbox, opens the mailbox or takes the letter from the box. Also, motor skills can be improved when a child moves roller with numbers or makes a small ball near the mail box moving and spinning. From these manipulations, a child can begin to understand the connection between her/his movements of hands and a speed of spinning of the ball or the roller.
Suggestions for improvement
I think that it would be better if the toy has more details to move, touch, grab. There are not enough elements of the toy which can influence the development of a child`s motor skills.
Cognitive analysis
Cognitive development of an infant is also associated with language development. In the second half of the first year of an infant`s life – a child`s talk, usually combined with expressive gestures. By the end of the age of one year, a child understands 10-20 words spoken by adults, and he/she can say one or more first similar sounding words (Craig, 1996).
Cognitive analysis of the toy
The toy is aimed to teach a child some words, numbers, alphabet. Also, if parents will help a child to play with this toy a parent can teach a child what colors the toy has. We can suggest that by playing with the toy, a child also can learn some songs. But, probably, only a child older than two years will be able to do it (to learn songs).
The toy also can influence cognitive development of a child indirectly, through parent-child interactions. It means that the toy can be the object of the joint activity of a child and his/her parents. If an adult uses the toy to communicate with a child, this toy will bring much more benefits for a child`s development rather if a child will play with a toy alone.
Suggestions for improvement
“Learning Letters Mailbox” can become better if it will be possible to move some of its details (such as the red bird) to other places. I believe it will give to an infant the opportunity to be creative.
However, it is known that children perceive and understand audio or visual media information not as good as adult persons do (Kirkorian, Wartella, & Anderson, 2008). I also know from the own experience of communication with infants, toddlers and children older than two years, that children younger than two years do not gain much by watching a video or listening records of songs.
For example, I observed the behavior of one little girl when she was younger than two years old and when she became older than two years old. In the age of almost three years, she began to learn and to sing songs from audio-records. In the age of two she was able to learn and to repeat some dance movements she saw in a video, but when she was younger than two years old she could learn dance movements only by observing real-life dances, and she was not able to learn any songs from cartoons, audio-records, etc.
It means that learning mode with numbers counting, alphabet and words singing can be useless for children in the first year as well as in the second year of their life because a child perceives much better practical actions, sounds, motions, etc. in this age.
But I think that this problem can be managed if the toy will suggest the participation of parents. For example, the toy can include not just the melody of some songs, but also the lyrics of songs (in instructions), so parents could sing it for their child while playing with the toy.
Social and emotional analysis
There is a variety of emotional states in the first 3-4 months of a child`s life: surprise - in response to unexpected signals, anxiety - as the reaction to physical discomfort. After 3-4 months, an infant smiles when seeing something or somebody familiar. 7-8-months-old infant responds to an appearance of strangers even more sharply. Around the same time, between 7 and 11 months "fear of separation" arises. By the end of the 1-year age, a child strives not only to emotional contacts but also to joint activity with adults.
Communication with family members performs the central role in the social development of a child who is younger than two years. Parents encourage a child to control his/her emotions, reactions. In this age egocentrism is one of main characteristics of a child. It means that a child can see situation only from the own point of view (Craig, 1996).
Social and emotional analysis of the toy
On the one hand, the toy is colorful, bright, and big, it attracts attention; the music and voice included in this toy are full of pleasure and, I believe, a child is experiencing interest, happiness, joy when he/she sees this toy mailbox. Also, I suggest that a child can learn from the voice of toy a particular manner of speaking and expressing some emotions.
For example, I often notice that children tend to imitate ways of speaking of characters of cartoons, or voices they hear when playing with toys, etc. For example, if the red toy bird (one of the elements of our toy) says “Hello, dear” with the particular intonation, it is possible that a child will like to imitate this intonation saying the same phrase.
On the other hand, I believe that an infant does not learn emotional reaction while playing with the toy as much as he/she does it when a child is interacting with adults. For example, if a child will see the smiling face of a mother and will hear her voice full of happiness and gladness, his/her need for affection will be satisfied, a child will experience security, etc. But if an infant hears the happy voice of the toy it will not affect him/her as mother’s voice and smile do.
Regarding the social development, I do not see any functions of the toy which can help to develop children`s social skills, etc.
Suggestions for improvement
As infancy is the period when children`s interactions involve, generally, children`s parents, we can suggest that “Learning Letters Mailbox” will be more efficient for infants` development if it will give more opportunities for parents` and children`s communication and shared activity.
Conclusions
There is a big choice of toys and other productions for children of different age groups in our modern world. Different commercials companies which release productions for children state that their toys, media programs and other educational productions for babies have cognitive benefits even for infants and toddlers development.
Toys for a child are not only the way of spending time; they are the essential source of a child`s development. A baby explores surrounding world and different phenomena by games with toys. But we must understand that those toys which can be preferable for children of one age can be useless or even harmful for children of another age period. That is why parent`s and other adults who play a significant role in a child`s life must choose toys with a thorough understanding of what benefits a particular toy can give to their child, to what extent a particular toy can be beneficial for a child.
The strength of this toy is that it has many different functions. A child can hear numbers, songs, and some words when he/she is using this toy. This toy is colorful; it has many details. However, there are more limitations and weakness of this toy than strength, as I believe.
The toy can influence the development of children older than 2-3 years positively, but for infants and children under two years, it may be useless. I can prove my statements by several arguments.
The first and the main reason the toy may be inefficient for small babies is that children younger than two years cannot learn new information through audio- or visual media. The toy we discuss in the paper has many audio records of songs, talks. But the result of several studies showed that children under two years, children older than two years and adult people perceive information from media in radically different ways. That is why baby audio programs can influence positively cognitive development of older children and adult people, but can be helpless for infants (Kirkorian, Wartella& Anderson, 2008).
Results of several studies also demonstrated that children younger than two years tended to learn more new words by communication with their parents, by listening to their parents talking rather than by hearing some audio records or seeing some educational video programs for babies.
DeLoache et al., for example, conducted the research and compared development of language skills of those children who tried to learn new words by using media program together with or without parents and those children who were not exposed to any media learning. Parents of children from "parent-teaching" group used special instructions and tried to teach their children to understand and verbalize new words (DeLoache, Chiong, Sherman, Islam, Vanderborght, Troseth & O’Doherty, 2010).
The period of learning new words continued for four weeks. The age of children who participated in the experiment was 12-18 months. At the end of “learning” period all children were tested and results indicated that children whose parents taught them, showed the highest scores on language development in comparison to infants who tried to learn new words by using media (DeLoache, Chiong, Sherman, Islam, Vanderborght, Troseth& O’Doherty, 2010).
Finally, I can say that in the case if one day I decide to buy the “Learning Letters Mailbox” for my children, I will try to use this toy wisely and will attempt to do my best to make this toy as beneficial for my children`s development as possible.
I believe that every toy can be useful for children`s development if parents know how to develop their child with the help of a particular toy. But at the same time, parents must remember that even the best, the most expensive toy in the world, will not be able to replace the communication and interaction with parents for a child.
References
Craig, G. J. (1996). Human development. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
DeLoache, J. S., Chiong, C., Sherman, K., Islam, N., Vanderborght, M., Troseth, G. L., & O’Doherty, K. (2010). Do babies learn from baby media?. Psychological Science. 21 (11), 1570-1574
Kirkorian, H. L., Wartella, E. A., & Anderson, D. R. (2008). Media and young children's learning. The Future of Children, 18(1), 39-61.
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