Jennifer Zosh and her colleagues wanted to find out how the kinds of toys parents and their children play with impact their interaction with each other. Their study used a traditional, non-electronic shape sorter and an electronic shape sorter toy to compare the differences between each parent-child pair who participated in the experiment. The shape sorter toy was the type of toy that was chosen because the ability to think about spatial concepts is very important in a child’s development and is actually the building blocks to science, technology, engineering, and math skills. They found out that while both groups of participants have talked at the same rate per minute, the difference was that parents with the electronic toys talked more about the toy itself and not about spatial concepts. This emphasizes how important the role of a parent is to the child’s process of learning. The group has advised however that parents do not necessarily need to do away with electronic toys but opt instead for a mixture of the two and to talk about the things that you want the child to learn and explore. Click this link to read more about the experiment…