4 ms·

Well let's see: development of motor skills, physical exercise, development of a reality-based sense of consequences, ability to feel embodied cause and effect,

• anonbanker 11y ago
  Nope. No hand-eye coordination or motor skill improvement happening when you use a mouse-driven computer interface to place blocks on a screen. No ad-hoc social interaction with other kids either, especially on public servers where lots of kids hang out. have you even played minecraft?
• duckmysick 11y ago
  You're the one claiming that "playing with blocks is a far better thing to do than playing with virtual blocks", but all you can offer are blanket statements. Can you point to a study that compares playing with blocks and playing video games and shows that the first option is far better than the other one? As for the particular statements: > development of motor skills Video games also help with developing motor skills. "The findings demonstrate a positive influence of computer games on psychomotor functioning" [1]. Although this study tested adults, here's a similar one with children [2]. > physical exercise Moving blocks with fingers offers as much exercise as using said fingers to press buttons or move a mouse. In any case, both activities offer negligible exercise compared to sports. > development of a reality-based sense of consequences What kind of consequences? That blocks will fall if they are not supported? 4.5-month-old infants are aware of that already and at this stage it's unlikely they played with blocks [3]. > ability to feel embodied cause and effect Unless they step on a brick bare-foot, playing with blocks won't improve the perception of causality any more than interacting with everyday objects in children's environment [4]. The only behavior on that list that is remotely related to blocks is "holding a block in each hand and banging the blocks together" - hardly a unique purpose of blocks. > chances for ad-hoc social interaction with other kids This is not an inherent property of playing with blocks, but rather of all potential group activities - including video games. Besides, online video games offer something that blocks cannot: a possibility of interacting with kids from other countries and cultures. > truly open-ended possibilities for play unconstrained by the imagination of the video game creator In theory, yes. In practice, you're heavily constrained by the number of pieces you own. The pieces themselves are constrained by their designer and manufacturer in terms of shape, size, and color. Compare this with gigabytes of RAM which can hold millions of virtual blocks and their properties. 1 - http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-4546-9_43 http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-4546-9_4... 2 - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0193397394900043 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/01933973949... 3 - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/001002779390002D http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00100277939... 4 - http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/itf09cogdevfdcae.asp http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/itf09cogdevfdcae.asp