A Preliminary Study on the Manipulation Motives of Young Childern

A group of activities of animals and humans including such behavior which are usually designated as manipulation, exploration, play, curiosity, etc. have lately received much attention from scientific quarters, which go so far as to recognize them as primary drives. The manifestions of curiosity in the forms of manipulation (the moving of external objects) and of exploration (the moving of one's own body) have been investigated with rats, monkeys, chimpanzees, etc. as subjects. Particularly an increasing amount of research has appeared concerning monkeys' patterns of behavior along the line of motives of manipulation, exploration, etc. (1-4,6-10,13). Since 1953 when Harlow(13) stated, 'As far as I know, there are no experimental studies of exploratory drive in cats, dogs, anthropoid apes, or children,' a few reports of experiments on chimpanzees' exploration have appeared in scientific journals(15-17) but a search in the publications available in this library has resulted in finding very few experimental studies of this nature on children.