The Influence of Boundaries on Young Children's Searching and Gathering

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to examine how boundaries influence the organization of the gathering and searching of 3- and 4-year-olds. In Experiment 1, children retrieved miniature carrots that were in plain view from a dollhouse that was divided in half by a visual, a functional, or a visual-functional boundary. There was also a control condition in which no boundary was present. Children exhibited more organized gathering in the visual and visual-functional boundary conditions than in the functional boundary and no-boundary conditions. This suggests that visual rather than functional properties of boundaries influenced the organization of young children's gathering behavior. In Experiment 2, we increased task difficulty by requiring children to search for carrots that were out of sight. Unlike in Experiment 1, children produced more organized searching in the visual, visual-functional, and the functional boundary conditions than in the no-boundary condition. Our discussion focuses on the role of the physical environment in organizing behavior.