Toy Activity
Child Psychology
Dr. Sepulveda
Submitted by: Joseph Daniels
06-17-2010
The toy I would like to do this project on is the memory game Simon. Simon the
toy was based off the child's game called "Simon Says". Simon Says was easy as
using your memory and recalling what Simon ( The person with the lead to call out the
action ) tells you what to do. Simon has four colored buttons, each producing a
particular tone when it is pressed or activated by the device. A round in the game
consists of the device lighting up one or more buttons in a random order, after which the
player must reproduce that order by pressing the buttons himself. As the game
progresses, the number of buttons to be pressed increases. Simon's tones, on the other
hand, were designed to always be harmonic, no matter what order they were played in.
I remember when I used to play my Simon I would almost never remember the colors.
At first that is how I played, but as I kept playing I would notice that I would be more
interested in following the sounds of the tones and then recreating them. This is
probably why people can play this game with a blindfold.
The suggested age range for this game is 5 years and older. I can see people
playing this game for their whole life as it helps with some key development in your
brain. The most positive aspects of this toy is that it helps with Piaget's Information-
processing theory. In the game you are getting and input which is the sequence, then
you are storing it with your short term memory, then you are calculating the sequence
again in your head, then you give the answer back to the game which is your output.
Doing this over and over and trying to get the high score which I have seen as high as
38 has got to help your brain out. Like I was saying the game mainly targets your short
term memory, or working memory. The good thing about this game that makes it sort of
easy is you keep building up like building blocks always adding another number to the
equation. The game also gives you a sort of reminder session before you have to
answer displaying the whole sequence , and then adding the next number then with that
reminder session you will probably be able to answer better. I do not really see a lot of
negative aspects of this toy. It was one of the first games that had a computer
processor. I feel that the only negative is that it makes you more routine, and that you
are constantly doing calculations like a robot.
I would really like for my child to play with this toy. Cognition is a very important
in child development. The way you process and control your thoughts and in turn that
helps you make better decisions. Also I really feel like if I were ever to get my child into
a musical instrument I would like to get them started out with Simon. The memory of
tones is obvious in this game. Most people concentrate on the colors and maybe that is
why they have a hard time playing it. If you focus on the melodies the game makes it is
a lot easier to remember. The only thing that scared me about this toy is the fact that it
trains your brain to think like a computer. In a lot of ways that is good for the
Information-processing, but it lacks communication with other people so I would prefer
to play monopoly or something that has more than one player.
This game fits into Erikson's Industry vs. Inferiority Stage as the child
concentrates on mastering new skills. The game is in fact sort of boring as you can only
do one sort of game so it is a pretty easy way to get a child to repeat and learn better
ways of controlling their memory. In Piaget's stages this game fits into concrete
operational period. The child understands the simplicity of the game and feels like they
can learn to play it better. They apply logical operations and principles to interpret
experiences.
This game demonstrates fine motor skills as the child demonstrates the use of
their and hands and fingers. The play of this game is not very vast as all you are using
is your memory and using your hands to tap on the correct color that corresponds with
the sequence called out. In a way there is not much to it as long as you have a good
memory span and can tap on the right colors you can easily do very well in the game.
My conclusion with having my field experiment child use this is that he liked it
very much. He is used to having to remember key controls to play his videos games so
this game was not that hard for him to remember at least ten numbers. He showed a
great interest to it as he never played the game before.
