The Effects of Exploration and Play on Young Children's Associative Fluency

The article summarizes, critiques, and extends experimental studies attempting to facilitate young children's associative fluency. The earliest studies had children playing with or exploring objects as a treatment for their generating creative uses for objects. This research suggests that play enables children to establish a playful disposition towards objects which results in their increased associative fluency. The review, which differentiates play from exploration, suggests that children in these earlier studies may have been trained in exploration not play. The review then discusses studies which guided children's exploration of objects by engaging them in an exploration open question dialogue with an adult, about the objects. The review concludes that the guided exploration questioning technique is a more effective facilitator of associative fluency than a free play treatment because the former has children being guided in the exploration of more object attributes in a relatively short period of time.