{"id":317838,"date":"2026-03-07T15:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T15:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/317838\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T15:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T15:41:13","slug":"your-brain-on-legos-psychology-today-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/317838\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Brain, on Legos | Psychology Today New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"

When announcements of the newly built Lego Galaxy, a space-themed destination within Legoland, splashed across my screens this past week, I was faced with the age-old parental dilemma: to go or not go with my kiddo? As with most parenting<\/a> decisions, this involved a fairly elaborate cost-benefit analysis: on one side of the equation, how much fun they\u2019d have and what benefits they\u2019d draw; on the other, how much I\u2019d enjoy the process. <\/p>\n

I have to confess: as a bit of an old soul, I\u2019ve never been the theme-park type, even as a kid. Since childhood<\/a>, I\u2019ve long nursed an allergic aversion to long lines, prolonged sun exposure, and activities that could end in vertigo. But since becoming a parent, I\u2019ve often made an exception for Legoland because my boys seem to enjoy it more than any other. Having gone to parks as varied as Tokyo Disneyland and Stockholm\u2019s Tivoli Gr\u00f6na Lund, both my kids have done enough and are not easily impressed by artifacts designed for their entertainment. But their long-standing love of Legos has made the eponymous amusement park something of a pilgrimage site we return to time and again. <\/p>\n

Studies Show the Benefits of Playing with Legos and Other Construction Toys<\/p>\n

In the end, we did make the trek to Lego Galaxy\u2013on a weekday, no less. As an educator myself (not to mention lifelong nerd), I didn\u2019t take missing school lightly. But I figured that because playing with Legos is spectacularly good for learning, the tradeoff was well worth it.<\/p>\n

After all, studies<\/a> have highlighted many of the cognitive benefits of such kinds of play. Some of these are obvious and predictable: Legos\u2013and construction toys more broadly\u2013help promote visuospatial reasoning, especially mental rotation and folding. Even more compellingly, playing with Lego in preschool may even predict<\/a> better math performance on standardized tests in middle and high school. <\/p>\n

But Not All Lego Play Is Equally Beneficial<\/p>\n

Curiously, not all forms of Lego-playing are created equal. Some work has shown that having ill-defined problems or end-goals<\/a> (rather than well-defined ones) can lead to greater creativity<\/a>. In one study<\/a>, participants were either asked to put together a Lego kit (with clear instructions and a target build) or simply build something. Researchers found that those in the undefined group (who were given no parameters for what to build) were more creative, showing more originality and novel forms of thinking.<\/p>\n

To the credit of Legoland designers, this is exactly what visitors like my family got to do in much of the park, especially in Lego Galaxy. The Galacticoaster, for example, allows for kids (and parents like me) to custom-build their spaceship before riding it, a manifestation of open-ended problem-solving in the form of a family-friendly roller coaster. This is in addition to all the spots in the park where you can already build whatever you want. <\/p>\n

Gender and Legos: A Surprising Finding<\/p>\n

Walking around Lego Galaxy with my child, I couldn\u2019t help but feel wistful. Growing up, I never got to play with Legos myself (and have the underdeveloped mental rotation skills to go along with it). Maybe it had something to do with being a first-generation immigrant whose parents were unfamiliar with the franchise; maybe I was too obsessed with Barbies to make room for construction toys. But seeing the girls of all ages in the park dressed as astronauts to celebrate the new space-themed land, it seemed to be proof that whatever Lego was doing, it was working, and confirming research showing that if anything, Legos treat girls as developmentally equal to (or more advanced than) boys, at least based on analysis<\/a> of the core assembly activity involved in Lego Friends sets (aimed towards girls) versus non-Friends sets.<\/p>\n

The clinical psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison famously said that play wasn\u2019t a luxury; it was a necessity. I\u2019d go one step further and say that what you play with, and how, matters too. As all the research on Legos demonstrates, the proof is in the build.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When announcements of the newly built Lego Galaxy, a space-themed destination within Legoland, splashed across my screens this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-317838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}