Toy play: How children discover and implement the designed action of Duplo bricks

Some toys (e.g., popular Lego and Duplo bricks) require specific motor actions to be used as the designers intended (interlocking the bricks). However, little is known about how children learn to discover and implement the designed actions of toys and the perceptual-motor requirements involved in toy play. We encouraged 91 12- to 60-month-old children and 20 adults to play with six Duplo bricks during a single 120 second-trial. Children showed a developmental progression in their perceptual-motor actions. The youngest children displayed non-designed exploratory actions (rotating, fingering, sliding, etc.) on single bricks or futilely attempted to interlock two bricks together. Older children interlocked bricks into flush towers. The oldest children and adults built multiple asymmetric constructions. Non-designed forms of construction (stacking and arranging bricks) were consistent across age. Unsuccessful attempts to interlock were distributed across age (and displayed even by adults) and were the result of breakdowns in perceptual-motor control. Real-time analyses of participants’ moment-to-moment behavior revealed little evidence of learning online because non-obvious object properties (fitting studs on the top of one brick to spaces on the bottom of another) and perceptual-motor requirements (e.g., aligning studs and spaces) impede discovery and implementation of designed actions in the moment. Thus, before children can engage in pretend play or build creative structures, they must overcome the perceptual and biomechanical challenges of interlocking.