Dec 02, 2013 04:43 PM EST By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

When one-year olds grab a pea their parents had previously been spooning them, they're building knowledge of its texture. When they throw one, they're gaining a sense of the vegetable's weight, how far they can throw it, and how far they can throw in general. When they smash it , they've just learned how hard the little green ball is relative to their own strength.

The point is, children need to be hands on to learn, which, given developing motor skills along with everything else that's still developing, means they need to be messy. In fact, the messier the child, the better the learner, according to a new study from the University of Iowa.

Being hands on is especially important for non-solid objects like oatmeal and clay, for those materials change shape and are more easily identified by their texture, according to the press release.

In this study, scientists used mostly non-solid food and drinks like pudding, oatmeal, applesauce, and soup and gave them made up names like "dax" or "kav" in order to control for any pre-existing exposure. Then, they changed the shape of each object and allowed the toddlers to explore each as deeply as they wished (leading to some messy behavior). Results showed that the toddlers most interactive with the material were also the most likely to identify an object with its made up name.

"It may look like your child is playing in the high chair, throwing things on the ground, and they may be doing that, but they are getting information out of (those actions)," said Larissa Samuelson, associate professor in psychology at UI.  "And, it turns out, they can use that information later. That's what the high chair did. Playing with these foods there actually helped these children in the lab, and they learned the names better."

The researchers also discovered how setting influenced learning. Toddlers on a high chair, associated with fits of messiness in infants as well as adults, induced more exploratory behavior than when seated at a table.

"It turns out that being in a high chair makes it more likely you'll get messy, because kids know they can get messy there," said Samuelson

"It's not about words you know, but words you're going to learn," Samuelson added.

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