Early environments and exploration in the preschool years

by Ilona Bass, Elizabeth Bonawitz

A great deal of research has demonstrated how children’s exploration is driven by opportunities for learning. However, less work has investigated how individual differences across children and their environmental contexts relate to patterns in playful exploration. We performed a “mega-analysis” in which we pooled preschool-aged children’s play data from four past experiments in our lab (N = 278; M_(age) = 56 months) and correlated play behaviors with age and socioeconomic status (median income, modal education in children’s home zip codes). We found that, with age, children performed more unique actions during play. Additionally, children from lower SES areas explored more variably; the link between this play and tendencies to focus on pedagogically demonstrated features traded off differently than it did for higher SES children. This work lays critical groundwork for understanding exploration across developmental contexts.