I don’t think it would have much, if any, impact on the results. But it disqualifies any conclusions drawn from the experiment because there is no way to distinquish if the response was due to the cues, or for some other reason. It’s entirely possible that the experiment was done with and without those cues enough times to determine that they were not a factor, but nobody has indicated that has happened. I suppose the only change I would expect to see in 5 year olds is an increase in the number of children who do not answer with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. With 7 year olds I would expect a small increase in the number of children who answer correctly. High schoolers don’t follow instructions so it wouldn’t make a difference.
Making a claim implies that it is intended to be relevant. Every time, no exceptions.
I don’t pretend I’m teaching you something new when I mention this fact. I know that you know it.
Making a claim and then saying later you didn’t “claim the point was relevant” is a paradigmatic example of arguing in bad faith.
Basically, TriPolar, you’ve been caught being extremely unreasonable, and you know it, and you’re trying to spin things in your favor. It’s not fooling anyone. In the last several posts, you’ve actually brought a couple of decent points to the table. That’s nice, but your previous behavior has made it difficult for anyone to engage with you in a trusting manner. Fool me once etc etc.
LHoD is doing a nice job of it in recent posts. Myself, not so much*, and that’s too bad for me–but a nice help would have been for you to own up to your mistake, or even better, to not have been, in the first place, so bizarrely hostile and irrational in your opening posts.
*Mostly because I fucking hate fucking intellectual fucking dishonesty.
It’s anecdotal (and of course it’s practically guaranteed there’ve been good studies done on this, if only I knew where to look) but I did try this on my five year old and three year old yesterday (I avoided “looks” language btw) and sure enough, they were both mystified–couldn’t even understand what I was trying to get at. Honestly I was surprised about the five-year-old–I didn’t realize the development happens so late concerning this concept.
At least you’ve finally made clear what your objection to the experiment-as-shown is, Tripolar. You spent 30 posts needling that the amount of water actually does change, and that therefore the children were actually giving a correct answer when they say that there is a different amount of water. You’ve backed off on that point, but to pretend like you’ve been trying to make the same point all along is disingenuous–or best case scenario, it just indicates that your communication skills are very poor seeing as how no one has been able to figure out what your point was until a few posts ago.
So then to state it clearly, your contention is that young children who make the error of conservation do so simply because they haven’t been taught to recognize the fiction that the amount of water doesn’t actually change? And older children have been taught this fiction, and so don’t make the error of conservation?
In a very general sense yes. I am saying that everybody who understands the principle of conservation has learned it. Not necessarily directly by someone explaining it to them, but through their life experiences. I do not believe anybody understands this innately (as it is being discussed here). While older children may be able to deduce this principle on there own, it is based on other learned information and concepts. I think many 5 year olds can have this explained to them, and they will understand it. And 5 year olds can also use deduce this, but I would not use ‘deduce’ in the same sense as with older people, they probably are not conciously using deduction.
Those are my contentions, and I have given logical reasons for them, and yet to see any logical basis or empirical evidence to show them to be untrue. I do not contend they are proven fact. I have been arguing that the evidence people have provided to the contrary did not disprove these contentions, and they still haven’t been disproved in this thread.
Now back to reality. I did not needle on this point for 30 posts. Others did. I did not succumb to peer pressure and make a false statement. Only by an unlikely coincidence would the volume of water remain the same if poured from one container to another, in reality. And I did not introduce the idea that reality was a basis for this point. It would have been much easier if everyone had stuck to discussing conservation of volume as a principle, which we all know encapsulates the discrepancy with reality (I hope we all know that the principle is based on common observation and does not reflect reality, because the minor difference is not important in this context).
Fry, there were several points being discussed at once, and the one you are discussing here was only relevant to a claim about reality. The statement regarding the volume of water changing was relevant to reality, and I didn’t introduce the concept of reality into the argument. It is not relevant to the experiment being discussed. I’m not the one who obsessed on reality, or diverged from the start of this argument about this experiment. I consistently stated, and still do, that the experiment does not indicate whether or not the understanding of the conservation principle is innate or learned, or anything about what age or stage of development is required for a child to understand it. I have not been intellectually dishonest, but I have been rude when others were being rude to me, as you have just done. The people being intellectually dishonest are the ones who disagreed with me on the subject of the experiment, but have still failed to show how it illustrates whatever point they are trying to make.
You wrote that to someone you knew to be a teacher, and who had not been rude to you in the slightest. You told a teacher that he was playing an “awful trick” on his students. That is rude. It’s also bizarrely hostile. And you continued to escalate the negative tone in your subsequent posts.
Fry, you are right. I just reviewed that. My comment was not directed at Left Hand, but at a general manner of teaching practised by some. But that is another case where my intent was not clear and it was no way unreasonable for Left Hand to consider that a remark targetted at him.
Left Hand of Dorkness, I offer you my apologies. I may have started the hostility there.
Hi Canny, sorry to hear about your DSL, I know how annoying that can be.
Now point number 2, I have addressed to death, so for once I’ll just skip it.
On point number 3, my response is simply, “Where’s the beef?”. Nothing yet has been presented in this thread to demonstrate your claim. The experiment doesn’t, nor has anybody even tried to explain how it could. I disagree that this is not a controversial matter. Your claims are not simple or uncontroversial, so far, they have demonstrated themselves to be false. 5 year olds will think that the water changed in volume, because they have no reason to think otherwise. Their eyes tell them that it does (their brain actually), and nobody ever told them that it didn’t. No life experience would tell them otherwise either. In fact, the life experiences of a 5 year old tell them that all sorts of unexplainable phenomena are occuring, and they should not rely on their abilities to predict behavior. That is also the point where the child will begin to observe all sorts of explanations for the behavior of the universe, and learn that not everything is at it seems. The child will also be introduced to the concept of measurement in a variety of ways. By the time the child is 7, he or she will have acquired the necessary background information to answer the question, whether through concious reasoning or not. I posed the example of 5 and 6 year olds using a balance scale. It’s easy to learn the concept, even without concious awareness of it, at a young age. Now my personal observations don’t prove anything, but they make your claim of proof suspect. Please show me the evidence that an older child is able to form this concept in a void of knowledge and experience about the subject. Otherwise, admit that you do not know what you are talking about. As I have just realized, Left Hand of Dorkness may have reason to have been hostile toward me, you do not.
And I repeat, to everyone reading this thread, no evidence has been provided to prove the assertion that the container of water experiment, or any similar experiment done with clay, or any other variation is demonstrative of anything except that someone who doesn’t know something, doesn’t know something, and in the case of the video, that the experiment lacks scientific value because of prompting by the experimenter.
Tripolar, would you argue that with enough tutoring (and I mean the word in a general sense; guided life experience) a typical 5 year-old could genuinely learn not to make the error of conservation? Let’s restrict the time span; say 2 months.
By ‘genuinely’, I mean not just anticipate the answer that a typical adult would expect from another typical adult, but truly perceive that the transformed water/clay/row of quarters is truly in proportion to the water/clay/row of quarters before the transformation (ignoring here the infinitesimal differences that a mechanical transformation will result in–let’s leave that discussion behind.)
To further clarify your position, would you argue against the idea that a typical 5 year-old’s brain is simply too developmentally immature (referring here to the physical development of the brain and related substructures) to stop making the error of conservation?
If it helps with the whole water thing, TriPolar, I can give you another example. When my toddler asks for more chicken nuggets than I served him and I don’t have any more, I can cut all the ones on his plate in half, and he thinks that I have given him more. I didn’t teach my (older) daughter anything for that to stop working with her - one day, it seemed she just stopped believing it. Maybe she figured out by observation that her stomach was exactly as full after eight half-nuggets as after four nuggets. But the transition to understanding this, whether based on teaching or observation or whatever, is well documented to occur within a specific age range, and researchers have been spectacularly unsuccessful at teaching it to younger children.
In general, the reason that people have been reacting so strongly to you, is that you seem to be attributing malice to those observations. It’s not, “Hey, these kids don’t understand conservation of volume yet - let’s have them display their ignorance so we can mock them!” It’s, “We cannot meaningfully teach about some measures of volume until the kids understand the underlying principle, and there is no known way to teach the underlying principle to kids below a certain ‘magic’ age - the methods that work for teaching it to older kids [like those articulated by LHoD in this thread] have been shown not to work.” Your tone makes it sound like you honestly believe that the former is at work, and that is irritating to those who do not believe that teachers and child development researchers are by nature child-haters and bullies.
(For what it’s worth, though, LHoD, my own daughter had conservation at age 5, down at the low end of the range - I’m a little surprised that not one kid in your class had gotten it yet. She just turned 7 last week. The day before her birthday, I asked her your question about, “Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks,” and she answered correctly without hesitation.)
ENugent, thank you for your contribution, but it still does not justify the conclusion. As I have explained before, your toddler sees more nuggets, and is satisfied with getting more nuggets, while your older child has figured out the concept, based on her life experience. No amount of these observations has any means of determining how a child thinks, or when or where a child learns something. I do not fail to understand what anyone is saying about this subject, but everyone has failed to offer proof of their conclusions. Until someone does, my conclusions are no less valid than anyone elses. I contend mine are actually more valid because they have been explained as a logical cause and effect, and have not been disproven in the slightest.
Once someone offers an explanation for there contention that Piaget has explained this somehow, all the rest of you have to admit you have don’t know what you are talking about, because you’ve all had ample opportunity to provide the information yourselves if you knew it.
Before I forget, how old is your toddler? If it’s a pre-school age, your observations are irrelevant. This discussion has not been about pre-schoolers.
Speaking for myself, I wasted a lot of time arguing with you because your initial conclusion was that the child was correct when making the error of conservation. Now you’re claiming that your conclusion was something entirely different the whole time. I personally won’t engage with you on this topic any further until you clarify your position. See post #211.
Yes, a toddler is by definition pre-school-age. But may I ask if you are seriously disputing the statement that
I understand that just because no one has figured out how to do something doesn’t mean that it is impossible to do - but it is evidence weighing in that direction. It appears to me from your arguments in this thread that there is no amount of evidence that would convince you that this actually is impossible. Is that true? Can you think of anything that, if demonstrated, would show that there is a critical age below which it is impossible to learn the principle of conservation? Because everyone can stop attempting to show you (admittedly nonconclusive) evidence if you will just admit that there is no evidence that would convince you.
ENugent, you are mischaracterizing my contention. I mentioned that we are talking about school age children, and I don’t apply anything I said to children younger that. It isn’t because I’m saying my or your contention does or does not apply to preschoolers, I just haven’t addressed it at all. I believe that most children by the age of 5 are capable of learning the principle of conservation, and applying it. I would be happy to have someone prove I am wrong because I do not like being ignorant about a subject, but I see no reason to assume I am. Every one of the experiments and observations people have related here prove my contention as much as their own. I am stating openly and plainly that I will admit to being wrong, when any evidence is presented to show it. You and the others can keep repeating the same mantra forever, it has no bearing on the facts no matter how many times it is said.
You just agreed that we can say the volume of water is the “same”, yet you’ve been arguing for about 100 posts that everyone is wrong, they aren’t the “same”.
I can’t even figure out what point you thought you were making about volume.
I am sorry Snifit, missed post #211. It’s now late, and I’ll have to respond tomorrow. Let me apologize now if I did not make it clear that the child was correct in reporting the observation of the contents of the container. It looked like more, and I suspected before your video that the child interpreted the question as pertaining to whether it looked like more, then you offered a video where the experimenter clearly intended the child to relate what the amount looked like. The child was correct in the answer. You contend that the correct answer should be based on the understanding of the principle of conservation (understanding the simple version of it only). How could that be correct? The child is in no way asked anything about the principle of conservation. And now we are back to the fruit. There is a correct answer. By your theory, it is impossible to give the correct answer, but under the same circumstances, it is not impossible for the child to give a correct answer. That is the strangest definition of correct I have ever heard.
I will read post #211 tomorrow, and respond to that.
Please note, I am responding to a number of people here, while you each get to address me directly. If you want me to clarify and explain every word I have written, I will, but it will take a long time. And it has no bearing on the facts of the matter.
Fair enough, Tripolar. I’m willing to forget the last couple pages of discussion because I think you are now arguing an interesting position. You have my blessing to ignore people who want to hash over what reality is some more.
Ah, and based on your last post I think I finally understand why you objected to the use of the word “look” in the video so strongly. I disagree with you, but we’ll let bygones be bygones there unless it pertains to your elaboration on your current position.
