When Children Ask, "What Is It?" What Do They Want to Know About Artifacts?

Running head: Literature and Language
When Children Ask, "What Is It?" What Do They Want to Know About Artifacts?
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When Children Ask, "What Is It?" What Do They Want to Know About Artifacts?
In the year 2004, a research was carried out in various nursery schools, day-care centers, preschools and also summer day camps on children of ages varying from two to four years in the United States. The major aim of the research was to establish exactly what small children want to establish when they ask the question "what is it?" regarding a given item. In other words, the research was about the desire of children to know about artifacts. The research could establish what actually small children intend to know whenever they ask questions on artifacts which seem ambiguous (Nelson, Egan, Holt, n d). In the research, "what is it?" was basically used as the research question.
The research was carried out in a laboratory setting so as to prompt the children to ask questions about items such as "What is it?" or "What is this?". Two experimental conditions were set. One of these conditions treated the questions from the children as aimed at establishing the name of an item while the other condition treated the children`s inquiries as if they were aimed to find out the functional information of the items (Nelson, Egan, Holt, n d).
The research involved thirty two children between the age of 24-26 months, thirty two children between the age of 37-47 months, and thirty two children between the ages of 49-59 months. From each age group, 16 children were allocated the name condition while the other half was allocated the function condition (Nelson, Egan, Holt, n d). Twelve unfamiliar objects were provide...