Welcome to our Journal of the Month news release series, where we highlight some of the work that is taking place within the School of Psychology. This month, we are featuring a journal from Emily Burdett, titled: ‘Tinkering to Innovation: How Children Refine Tools Over Multiple Attempts’. Emily has put together a few words describing what their research entails.
‘A variety of past work has shown that children younger than 8 years struggle to create a tool to solve a problem. My collaborator, Samuel Ronfard and I, were curious if we gave children more time and used a variety of materials (e.g., pipe-cleaners, straws, playdoh, tape) if more children would be able to manufacture a tool to retrieve a prize at the bottom of a box. We were also interested in capturing the creative process of how children go about making a good tool to solve the task. Capturing this process is a novel element in the work on creative problem solving. Our main finding is that children (4-12 years) who engaged in more tinkering (retaining some objects and adding new objects to their tool following failure to retrieve a prize) were more likely to innovate (build successful tools) than children who did not. We also show that it's not just older children who are more successful; but that, regardless of age, children who 'tinker' and refine their tool based on their learning and experience, are more likely to retrieve the prizes at the bottom of the box. Our findings suggest that problem-solving is improved by tinkering, or engaging in exploration that is more systematic.’
If this article has caught your interest, you can read it at the following place: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/16226335/tinkering-to-innovation-how-children-refine-tools-over-multiple-attempts
Posted on Thursday 18th May 2023