The Box, a Naturalistic Experiment with Young Children: The Same Object as Mediating Factor for Different Activities

There have been a number of theories suggesting that there are qualitative differences in the way that children of different ages and adults perceive the world. The most famous of these theories is Piaget's genetic epistemology, describing and documenting differences in understandings of the physical and social worlds. In this paper we make the argument that there are also qualitative differences in the way children of different ages recognize the same objects as mediating devices for their activity. The object as mediating factor is based on the child's everyday experience with similar objects combined with his/her ontological development. A naturalistic experiment in which the same object was introduced into an infant/toddler classroom and a preschool classroom is presented as an example of these types of differences. The recognition that objects have very different meanings for children of different ages has important implication for the way teachers in general, and early childhood educators in particular, think about the introduction of materials into their classrooms.