Let's Experiment On My 3 Year-Old

[quarky]

This reminds me:

Time to mow.

 

[Rasmus]

... assuming that you want that conversation to be about Spongebob Squarepants,

My problem is that there are hardly any adults whom you could have that conversation with.

 

[ddt]

Chimpanzees simply cannot. [ETA: Despite some remarkable cognitive accomplishments of chimps!]

Ahem, that video says "20th Century Fox Research Library". It's a teaser for the upcoming Planet of the Apes movie.

 

[Loss Leader]

I am glad you are putting your children to good use by experimenting on them. They are good for nothing else until they are big enough to mow the lawn.

I've found that the six year-old can be used as a sort of primitive alarm clock.

 

[quarky]

Like clock-work.

Even roosters aren't as reliable.

 

[Cavemonster]

Do you think the 3 year old would be able to ignore the impulse to point to the bigger pile of treats?

ETA: I think it's telling that for all the cognitive abilities chimpanzees share with us, impulse control is one they seem to lack.

Three is a weird age. Functions come in sort of patchy.

In a recent residency, I had a three year old explain to me in a running monologue that could have been delivered by Woody Allen why he was afraid my dragon puppet might eat him. Other kids in his group were perfectly capable of understanding the puppet wasn't real, but could barely string a sentence together.

 

[dropzone]

If you were a real parent you would know that they won't mow the lawn.

They will when when when ... I explain how we will...

...Nope, sorry. Regardless what Fox News has become, I will not use good people to defend it.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

The following will work on him until he is about 9.

Fill a measuring cup with a predetermined volume of juice, it can be any volume, you'll just need to be consistent throughout the experiment.

Find two glasses with roughly similar volume, but different shapes. A tall glass and a rocks glass are a good example, because one is narrow and the other is wide.

Pour the same volume of liquid into both glasses.

Ask your kids which has more juice. Let him watch the entire operation of you measuring equal volumes and pouring them into glasses if you wish.

You child will insist that the narrower glass contains more liquid. Volume is too complex a concept for young children. "Taller" = "more."

You have got to be kidding. 9 years old? This seems more like an issue of keeping a kid totally unexposed to the way the world works. I was cooking with my mom by the time I was 4. There is absolutely no way I would have thought that the amount of liquid changed according to which container we poured a measured cup of liquid into.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

Okay, I knew that was a bogus claim. I just tried that on my friend's 7 year old and they said, "It's the same amount! You put the same amount in both!"
This is a child who has some experience with how the world works. When you help your parents pick fruit on the family farm, you learn quick enough that the basket's shape doesn't change how many avocados you picked.

 

[Roboramma]

You have got to be kidding. 9 years old? This seems more like an issue of keeping a kid totally unexposed to the way the world works. I was cooking with my mom by the time I was 4. There is absolutely no way I would have thought that the amount of liquid changed according to which container we poured a measured cup of liquid into.

That last sentence doesn't follow from the previous one. The you were able to help your mother cook, or even to cook independently, did not require the ability to realise that the amount of "stuff" is independent of the shape of container that it's in.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

That last sentence doesn't follow from the previous one. The you were able to help your mother cook, or even to cook independently, did not require the ability to realise that the amount of "stuff" is independent of the shape of container that it's in.

I agree, but that wasn't what I was trying to say. I was trying to say that the experience of regularly measuring out ingredients into measuring cups and then pouring them into containers of varying sizes meant that I internalized the concept of quantities and measures to the point that I understood quantities didn't change when you put them into different vessels.

I realize that this experiment would work on some children, but I would have to seriously question the intelligence of a 7-9 year old who was fooled by it.

 

[rustypouch]

So when are you going to use a Gom Jabbar to see if he's human or animal?

 

[case#46cw39]

I'd be interested in his response to this ...

The yellow bus is at the zoo.
All your friends are on the yellow bus.
----------------------------------------
Do you know where your friends are?

 

[Loss Leader]

I'd be interested in his response to this ...

The yellow bus is at the zoo.
All your friends are on the yellow bus.
----------------------------------------
Do you know where your friends are?

I'll try it. I doubt he'll be able to deal with a concept of a hypothetical. He'll tell me that's not where his friends are. Then he'll ask me which friends. Then he'll go through them by name. Then he'll want to know why they're there. He'll never be able to accept the statement, "All your friends are on the yellow bus."

 

[case#46cw39]

I'll try it. I doubt he'll be able to deal with a concept of a hypothetical. He'll tell me that's not where his friends are. Then he'll ask me which friends. Then he'll go through them by name. Then he'll want to know why they're there. He'll never be able to accept the statement, "All your friends are on the yellow bus."

Shows how much I know about kids lol.

What if you said, I'm going to tell you a story ...

There is a yellow school bus at the zoo.
There are a bunch of puppies on that yellow school bus.
-------------------------------------------------
So where do you think the puppies are?

 

[quarky]

I'll try it. I doubt he'll be able to deal with a concept of a hypothetical. He'll tell me that's not where his friends are. Then he'll ask me which friends. Then he'll go through them by name. Then he'll want to know why they're there. He'll never be able to accept the statement, "All your friends are on the yellow bus."

And good on him.

We would do well imho to be on guard as per driving irrational constructs into children's heads.

Its enough to familiarize them with the solid geometry of the world they trip over; before teaching them about the illusions beyond that.

Of course I have no idea. I've raised some kids. There was no blue-print.
I guess we all experiment on our kids. Behavioral modification and manipulation was something I pretty much sucked at. The girls set me straight pretty quick as to whom was actually in charge.

They taught me so much.
Yet I don't remember most of it.

 

[case#46cw39]

So you think teaching kids logic, which is on all IQ tests, and the same thing as critical thinking according to the State University of New York (SUNY) Critical Thinking Rubric, is teaching them to be irrational? If that's the case then definitely don't teach him logic.

 

[Kaylee]

After watching a TV show about primates, I tried the following experiment on my 3 year-old:

Two large cups, a small train, and an Elmo doll. I put the train in one cup and told my son, "We're putting the train in this cup. Elmo is watching and he sees that it's in this cup." Then I put Elmo in the other room. I came back and said, "Now, while Elmo is gone, we're going to play a trick on him. We're going to take the train out of this cup and put it in the other cup." I moved the train and then brought Elmo back. I asked my boy, "Which cup is Elmo going to look in first to find the train?"

After a moment of thought, my son indicated the second cup which actually contained the train.

I repeated the experiment on my 6 year-old (who had been downstairs and had not seen the test). He instantly indicated the first cup, where the train had originally been.

Fascinating thread.

This is what I want to know though -- if LL were to teach his 3 year old that "Elmo" would look at the first cup first instead of letting him get to that realization on his own -- would that mess him up?

How important is it that children lean some things on their own?

Anybody happen to know if there are any theories on that?

 

[quarky]

I got theories.

In kindness;

They probably don't count.

 

[Gr8wight]

The six year old initially indicated the taller glass held more water. When I walked him through it all step by step a second time, he said they both had the same amount.

Experimenter bias.