I think almost everyone has seen it, especially at Christmas or perhaps at a birthday party. A child gets a staggering number of presents and begins to open them. It becomes a race, ripping the wrapping off of each present and finally getting to the last one. Not spending significant time or attention with any specific toy, the child asks, "Is this all there is?"

This raises an interesting question: Does the number of toys affect the amount of time a young child spends playing with each toy and the quality of play with each toy?

To test the hypothesis that an environment with fewer toys would lead to a higher quality of play, Dauch and colleagues (2018) crafted a clever laboratory study. The researchers recruited 36 toddlers ages 18 and 30 months and their parents. The participants came from similar socioeconomic backgrounds and had typical development of personal-social, motor, and cognitive........

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