Playing with blocks and cognitive development: A narrative review [Il gioco con le costruzioni e lo sviluppo cognitivo: Una review narrativa]

Playing represents a fundamental activity for children’s growth. Games con-sisting in manipulating blocks, especially, seems to have an important role in thechild’s cognitive development. Many studies have been conducted for investiga-ting the various aspects of playing with blocks, in order to understand its actualeffectiveness in relation to different cognitive skills. A first area of research re-gards the relationship between playing with building blocks and visual-spatialability; a second one examines the relationship between playing with buildingblocks and mathematic skills; a third one explores the relationship between buil-ding blocks, visual-spatial skills, numerical intelligence in its various compo-nents and mental imagery. These studies suggest that playing with blocks repre-sents an important recreational and educational tool with a high capacity to en-hance the overall cognitive development and specific skills like the mathemati-cal ones. This narrative review offers an analysis of the existing empirical evi-dence on playing with building blocks in order to understand its actual effective-ness. In an historical period where electronic devices are gradually replacing themanual games that have always accompanied human development, knowing thestate of this kind of research may represent a source of reflection for reconside-ring scholastic programs with the aim of a possible return to specific manualplaying activities, in order to enhance cognitive functioning and specific schoolskills