Parents, Rejoice: Study Finds Messy Kids May Be Better Learners

B Kitty/flickr

B Kitty/flickr

Anyone with kids may recall those wild toddler “meals” in which the food went flying, ending up all over the floor, the furniture, you, your child’s face and body. The ratio of food offered to food actually ingested was grim.

It turns out there may be an unexpected upside to those epic messes (other than making fabulous holiday cards): new research suggests the messier infants and toddlers are at mealtime, the more they are learning.

Specifically, researchers suggest, learning vocabulary for new things is enhanced when toddlers are playing in a particularly happy place to be messy: the high-chair. A new study, led by Larissa Samuelson and her colleagues at the University of Iowa, shows that context matters for learning.

When 16-month-old infants sitting in a high-chair were presented with novel non-solid objects (such as, say, glue, oatmeal, or jelly), they were much better at then identifying something made of the same material compared to 16 month-olds sitting at a lab table. This was measured both in terms of their recalling names of the new objects (some example words were “dax” and “kiv”) and in distinguishing them from objects made of a different material but in a similar shape.

How could toddlers tell the difference between a jar of glue and a glass of milk? Well, not by just looking. The infants showed the best recognition of the objects they played with the most using their hands and mouths; gentle, non-messy touching didn’t help.

But perhaps the most significant finding is that the infants’ skills at identifying and naming these new objects was dependent on how messy the kids were outside the lab Continue reading