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A simple toy, and what it says about how we learn to mentally rotate objects

Posted on September 17, 2008

One of Jimmy's favorite toys as a toddler was a simple little bucket of blocks. There were three shapes: a rectangular prism, a triangular prism, and a cylinder. The bucket's lid had three holes: a square, a triangle, and a circle (The picture at right was the only one I could find online -- this sort of toy has gotten much fancier in recent years). For an adult, it's a simple matter to properly sort the shapes by placing them into the corresponding holes, but for a toddler, it's a real challenge. It took months before Jim was able to put any of the blocks through the holes, despite countless ...

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infants , kids