I have realized that all along, and don’t know why Left Hand has been arguing with me and insulting me. If you read my posts, you will see I am constantly skeptical that Left Hand means what he has written. But he continues to respond with nonsensical denials that fly in the face of his own statements.
I know all about cognitive bias. That’s why I repeatedly say, “Don’t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see”. It applies in a variety of ways to this subject. I think it is very important to consider because one problem in education is that it is heavily based in memorization of facts without an understanding of the underlying subject. It reinforces the concept that understanding comes from the accumulation of knowledge, rather than as a process. That is how people end up believing things that are not true, even if they have the knowledge and understanding to refute their own mistaken beliefs. Despite throwing a bone in that direction in modern educational methods, that should be the concentration of effort in schools. Education should focus on expanding a person’s context, and giving them the opportunity to develop their learning skills beyond the one’s we are born with. Reading, penmanship (I use that term to distinquish from writing as a communication skill), and arithmetic are exceptions because they are core skills necessary to use as basic tools (notice that they are things machines have been doing for a long time now). After that, the process of learning is far more important than any of the content.
Never mind: I now see you’re arguing that the volume of water in the third glass is actually less since there will inevitably be a bit of water remaining in the second glass.
But what LHoD and the cognitive scientists are saying is that as adults, people understand that the volume remains “virtually” the same when you transfer liquid from one container to another, while as children, people mistake particular dimensions for strong indicators of volume, therefore thinking that water in a thin glass has greater volume than water in a fat glass.
TRipolar OLd Lamb, do you understand that there’s not one single person reading this thread who’s thinking, “Yeah, Tri’s got it right!” Literally, not one. Go on, ask. (If I’m wrong I’ll be amused but it still won’t prove much.)
I mean, are you suggesting that if the experimenter had left the word “looks” out of it, and just asked “do they have the same amount” both after and before the pour, then things would have gone differently?
Fry, I’ll repeat, my comments about the physical properties of water were addressed toward a statement about reality. In reality, the volume of water changes. I didn’t bring it into the conversation. It’s not just the imperfect process of pouring water from one container to another, the volume of water is subject to many factors, and difficult to maintain at a constant under the conditions of the experiment. People don’t generally consider that because it’s beyond our abilities to determine through simple observation. But people do not know that the volume seems to remain the same because of observation. They know it because someone told it to them, or provided the resource of a measuring device. The child in the experiment has not been provided those resources, and answers as any adult would under the same circumstances.
The part about looks has to do with the scientific method. It is reasonable to assume that a child would base their answer on what the water ‘looks like’. But an experiment can’t test for that if the experimenter is polluting the test by asking the subject to use that very method. The child would probably answer the same, but you can’t draw that conclusion from the observation because the methodology is flawed.
This is a highly implausible empirical claim, but if you can give some evidence you will have made a point.
What normally functioning adults have judged that there was more liquid in one container than another, after having seen the liquid masses first in two identically shaped containers?
TriPolar, you’re just not getting it. These experiments have been repeated in a plethora of modifications, by umpteen different researchers, and all reach the same conclusion. The errors that children make are systematic and happen at very predictable stages in their development. This does not mean that **LHOD **or anyone else thinks there is anything wrong with them. This is the normal pattern of development. And **LHOD **isn’t suggesting that teachers’ necessary role is to correct these (nonexistent) deficiencies. He’s saying that effective teachers must know about and take into consideration the different ways in which children at different ages/stages of development think.
Your contention that a child is “correct” in this failure to understand conservation of volume because some few molecules remain behind in the original container thus the amounts are now “different” fails because the child believes the quantity transferred has actually **increased **in the transfer (there’s **more **in the new, taller vessel).
And perhaps you truly do not know anything about cognitive development by stages. You therefore do not know (and I don’t think anybody here has explicitly stated) that the same child will, when slightly older, correctly reply that the volume of transferred water remains the same. And so will any different child, at a predictable age. This will occur as a normal part of development, independent of any teaching the child(ren) may have been exposed to.
Piaget certainly isn’t the final word in cognitive development, but at this level of discussion anyway, you, TriPolar, are completely out in the weeds.
You nailed it.
I’m reminded of some crap evaluations that my colleagues and I received years ago from a few students on a university campus. Invariably, the flakes who blew off class meetings and failed to turn in assignments gave us poor scores.
I’m not saying that we were perfect in all areas or that some comments weren’t valid, but it’s interesting how many students of any age (and their parents, for that matter—yes, there are helicopter parents of college students too) abdicate all responsibility and blame every problem on the teachers.
Sound familiar?
To be perfectly fair, I did bring these misconceptions up in the context of my helping students correct them. But that’s because at the age level I work at, students are for the most part ready to make that move from preoperational (thinking that the water increases in the skinny glass) to concrete operational (thinking correctly that THERE ARE EXACTLY THE SAME NUMBER OF MOLECULES AT ALL TIME IN ALL GLASSES NO MATTER THE TEMPERATURE, MOON PHASE, OR ASTROLOGICAL SIGN, as I’ve so obviously said before). Since kids are on that cusp, I help them get over it, partly because it helps in our studies of weather and properties of matter and measurement, partly because it helps them become aware of how things ain’t always what they seem and how careful use of scientific methods such as measuring things with cup measures can help you see past such illusions, and partly I admit because it’s fun to blow their little minds sometimes, and they enjoy it too. If I were working with preschoolers or highschoolers, I wouldn’t bother with variations on this experiment: neither group would gain anything from it.
On a related note, my fiancee told me a story last night from when she was a child. She was watching a movie with her younger brother, and made popcorn for them. She got down two bowls out of the cupboard to put the popcorn in; a glass bowl and a metal bowl. She divided the popcorn as evenly as she could into the two bowls, and since she didn’t think she could trust her brother with a glass bowl, handed him the metal one. Big mistake!
The glass bowl was smaller, and so looked fuller than the metal bowl even though there was the same amount of popcorn in each. He howled and howled that she was being unfair, and she just couldn’t convince him that there was the same amount of popcorn in each bowl.
So, she got down an even bigger metal bowl and poured the popcorn from the glass bowl into it. She handed him the ‘small’ metal bowl and everyone was happy.
And on that note, I would like to stop arguing with you, and start discussing. The argument really hasn’t lead us anywhere (although I have enjoyed it).
Through the course of human history, no one was able to apply that principle in a very simple way until then (anecdotally speaking). I doubt Archimedes was the first person to reach this development stage or had a teacher fix him. (and the use of* fix *is a misrepresentation of the position taken by my adversaries here, but is a dig at their lack of specificity and clarity when citing science).
Glad to have you join the argument Canny (although it’s been taking a reasonable turn, but I’m happy to have fun with you). First are you an actor? Do you really think I’m falling behind in waiting tables? Or do you not know what ‘in the weeds’ means?
Second, please explain to me how the video cited by Left Hand, that purports to show an experiment that demonstrates this principle, could be considered valid scientific methodology. (I’ll just assume you understand the reality about the mutability of the volume of water and we don’t have to revisit that).
Third, justify your claim that, ‘And so will any different child, at a predictable age. This will occur as a normal part of development, independent of any teaching the child(ren) may have been exposed to’. Please look at my response to Frylock first. I contend that the research, as it has been related to me in this thread, cannot. You cannot remove a child from the world and deny him the opportunity to learn these things so that you can perform such a test.
For everyone interested in continuing this line of debate, either the research and it’s conclusions have been misrepresented in this thread, or it is crap. It can only serve to prove my point, based on much simpler logic and empirical observation, that nobody can understand this principle prior to having the requisite background in their observational context. Is there somewhere in this research where young children were given the resources to add this principle into their context, and then still failed to be able to comprehend it? I don’t think so, and I offer as proof my own observations (which I’m sure can be backed up by teachers of young children) that a group of three children aged 5 and 6 (to the best of my knowledge, I’m not a researcher and didn;t have anyone fill out forms), was shown a simple balance scale, given some weights, and with about 15 seconds of demonstration were able to pick up and utilize the physical principle involved. This is not an exact analog to the volume of water, since the children already have the concept of weight in their context, but I think its close enough to question these claims. Finally to add that, why on earth would you attempt to teach readin, ritin, and rithmetic to anybody who could not understand this principle. These are abstract skills that stretch a persons intellectual ability far beyond that of simple volumetric comparisons.
I’m not seeing how the famous (is it apocryphal btw?) Eureka incident is relevant. Nothing in that story about two masses of liquid in identically shaped containers, nothing in there about one of the masses being poured into a thinner, taller container, nothing in there about people making judgments (prior to measurement) concerning how much liquid is in any particular container.
More of the same, Tripolar. You assume the least charitable interpretation of what others are saying and argue against that.
Oh, and another analogy/example that has no relevance to anything remotely similar to what is being discussed in this thread. More evidence that you just. Don’t. Get it.
Yep, I’m done here. You’ve already shown (and said yourself) that you have no intention of having an honest argument.
I think it’s a relevant comparison between the abilities of a 5 year child applying the principle in a simplistic manner, vs. the* Father of Science *combining the same principle in a simplistic manner. As I noted in my response to Canny Dan, young children have no problem comprehending the principle when applied to weight.
I don’t offer it as conclusive proof of anything, rather as a reason to question the claim that people understand these principles innately starting at a particular developmental stage. The failure to address this in the claim alone make it suspect (and I have no idea what the actual claims of Piaget are, but somebody is claiming this).
Not sure about the proper term. The story is an anecdote. Apochryphal might be a better way to describe it.
As near as I can tell, you haven’t been arguing in good faith. I have. At this point, if we’re going to discuss things, you need to be clear on which of the nonsense you’ve said so far that you were just using to troll the discussion, and which of the nonsense you’ve said so far you sincerely believe; I’m certainly not going to waste my time trying to distinguish between the two. Or we can throw out all your ridiculous objections to Piaget’s observations, whether they were sincere or insincere, and start from scratch, if you’d rather.
I’m confused. I thought we were starting to discuss things reasonably. And I did not state that I have no intention of having an honest argument. I’m not sure how you are missing the point of my analogy/example either. I am contending that no example shown in this thread shows that people have an innate ability to understand physical principles of conservation at any point in life, rather, that it is learned. And by school age, children are capable of learning it, but cannot be expected to have learned it simply through life experience at the age they typically start school.
TriPolar, do you realize that similar experiments have been conducted with clay instead of water in which the clay was formed into different shapes (without removing clay) and the “amount” of clay the child thought was there depended on the shape?
Based on your posts I’ve just read in this thread, I am guessing your response will be one of the following:
The experimenter did not account for all clay molecules, therefore the child may be correct
Clay is the real reality, the experimenter doesn’t exist and the child is answering based on standard 7th dimensional interpretations that most adults are no longer aware of
That statement may or may not be true. But assuming these milestones happen at a fairly predictable pace and sequence (generally), it would seem to point towards more than just environmental exposure (not everyone’s exposure is the same), but rather a combination of brain structure changes along with environmental exposure.
Kind of like language - we are wired to be able to develop language, but it requires a learning process to fine tune the physical structure in the brain.
Okay, join the crowd. Please try to read and comprehend. I heard about the clay when Canny Dan pointed it out, and it has only strengthened my argument.
Also, the claim was made that in an experiment where water was poured from one container to another, the volume of the water would not change. That was specifically characterized as reality. Do you understand that it is not reality?
Now, do you contend that children have an innate ability to understand the concept of conservation of volume that appears at a certain stage of development, or is the concept learned?