Tactual access and stimulus dimensionality as determinants of young children's identification and transformational questions.

Thirty-six preschool children were invited to look at a set of stimulus materials. One-third of the children were presented with three-dimensional materials that they were free to touch, one third with three-dimensional materials that they could not touch, and one-third with life-size photographs of the objects. Results revealed that the children in each group asked a similar number of questions to identify the names of the objects. However, children who could touch the objects asked the most "transformational" questions (e.g., questions involving broader speculations about the object's origin, function, and relation to other objects in the environment), while those who could not touch the objects asked the next most and those shown photos of the objects asked the least.