He doesn’t believe the conclusion, which is fine. That’s fine, but I’m offering him a chance to disprove this. I’ve got access to a number of different friends of my daughter. Let’s see if there is a way for a child at the age of four to understand that volumes of water don’t change regardless of the shape of container they are poured into.
This has nothing to do with Piaget any more. This is TokyoBayer’s daughter and her friends. At almost four, she’s giving incorrect answers to a specific question to a specific test. She gives correct answers to specific questions to a very similar specific test, one in which nothing additional was taught.
Why is it that she can correctly point out which pile of Legos is larger; which amount of cookies is larger; and which cup has more water, when the cups are the same size and shape; but is unable to do so when the size and shape of the cups are not similar?
Forget about Piaget or anyone else. What’s happening here?
I feel uncomfortable discussing your daughter as a test subject, but in this broader context I don’t mind saying that your daughter would seem to be very bright, and might just be messing with you
I think it’s great to challenge science. I really wish that more people would do so, because wrong hypotheses are blindly continued for generations because people blindly listened to people like Dr. Spock without critically challenging them.
But, it’s one thing to constructively criticize. It’s another to just jeer from the sidelines.
You have repeatedly stated that your hypothesis is that children don’t know things because they haven’t learned them yet. You are attacking Left Hand (who is perfectly able to defend himself), but I fail to see the logic of your attack.
My question to you is simple. I’ve described a set of experiments and the results. Leaving aside Piaget, my hypothesis is that my daughter and other kids around four years seem unable to understand conversation of liquids. (It’s not my original theory, but let’s say it is.)
So, what do we need to do? Obviously, she’s not picking up the concept by direct observation, which is seemingly odd because she picks up almost everything by direct observation. We never specifically taught her that gravity work via attraction of masses, and that mashed potatoes dropped from high chairs goes down instead of up or sideways. Yet she has a firm grasp that things will fall down.
She does a lot of [del]experimenting[/del] playing with water herself. She pours things from glasses to buckets and back. Nevertheless, she seems unable to tell that the quantity of water is not changing when being poured.
You seem to be suggesting that she’s teasing me about this, but only this. She never teases me about anything else consistently. So why this? It doesn’t have to be my daughter. There’s lots of four-year-olds around here to work with.
Well, I’m basically saying, but very nicely, to put up or shut up.
TokyoBayer, my argument with **Left Hand **goes back a ways on this subject. It certainly has no bearing on you. I’m not going to try to evaluate what goes on with your daughter. But in reference to you, why are you so concerned about this? Your daughter is exhibiting an active and creative mind, so what difference does it make why she answers this one question the way she does? And why do you demean your own daughters experimentation by calling it playing? I understand you did that as a humorous expression, but she is experimenting, that’s what a lot of playing is about, especially in bright children like your daughter.
As for putting up or shutting up, I already have. I don’t know how to state it any more clearly. If a person does not know something, it is because they have not learned it. That’s a simple application of Occam’s Razor. To claim otherwise requires proof, and none was offered by Left Hand, and none by you. No one has expressed a means by which any other conclusion can be determined. If there is one, someone who claims that Piaget has proven this, and that they understand what Piaget has proven, would be able to present the means by which an alternate theory has been proven, or even could be proven. We all know that at some very early age children seem to lack the capability to reason in many ways, but determining that point, and the determination of specific stages of development require more than anecdotes.
And I am not just jeering from the sidelines. I have attempted again and again to get those make the extraordinary claim about some unseeable stage of development and their understanding of it to prove it. That’s not jeering. And if you want to know why I’m skeptical about this area, you hit it above. I was raised by parents who raised me according to books, and I only wish it had been something only mildly misguided by Spock. My parents were academics, and if someone with ‘Dr.’ stuck on the front of their name wrote something, they considered it to be gospel. I may have become a skeptic at a fairly young age, but I was only 4 when my parents volunteered me to be locked in a simulated refrigerator for some sadistic experimentation hidden under the guise of scientific research. I don’t know how to say this quite right, but don’t use your brain to assess your daughter, use your heart. I hear from you a tale of parent who is blessed with a diamond, and is worried about a flaw that may only be random glimmer of light. I hope that sounds right, please don’t take it the wrong way.
I am not demeaning her play. I’m actually complimenting her. Many parents think their kids are playing when they really are experimenting with the world.
I’m not concerned at all about my daughter. I find this fascinating. I’m using the terms “right” and “wrong” in the sense that they are factually correct or not. This is simply a report and not criticism of her at all. What you are failing to see is that there is a fascinating issue here. Why is a child able to understand one thing but not another? Why is it that all kids in general have the same understandings and inabilities?
I think this is the worse application of Occam’s Razor which I have ever run across.
If that is how Occam’s Razor were to work then it would eliminate all scientific and engineering endeavors. Discoveries are found when people ask why.
Your answer fails because it’s not simply that small children have not learned that two volumes of water are the same, it is that they seem unable to grasp that despite direct observation.
You say that they have not learned it. Why hadn’t they learned it? What do they require? Why is it that they can directly observe that two volumes of water are equal when they are in similar sized glasses but not in dissimilar sizes? Why is it that they believe that the water is the same when it is in one glass but not another?
Why is it that children in a similar culture seem to develop the ability to grasp the more abstract concept at a fairly similar age?
If it were a simple matter of children not learning this yet, then how do you teach them? At four, they seem unable to grasp this on their own. Why is that? What is required for them to learn?
We have a theory. It’s been tested and fairly well established. As you admit you can’t be bothered to read what Piaget has said, then there isn’t enough common knowledge to have a discussion.
I beg to differ.
Yes, you are taking this completely, 100% wrong. Do not project your parents’ misguided shit on me. I am not your sadistic parent. If you are seriously suggesting that asking a little girl if two glasses of water is in anyway the equivalent of locking a child into a contained space, you need to calm down and back away from the keyboard for a while.
I love my child dearly and to suggest otherwise is suggests more about your issues than mine.
As an educator who has worked with tons of little kids over the years, I can definitely say that children of the same age can in fact differ wildly in terms of their understandings and capabilities (this includes social skills as well).
That may be true so far as it goes. The real issue though is whether they have not learned it because they have not had the proper experiences to learn it (either by natural experimentation or from being taught") or because they are unable to learn it
You are being read as implying that it is the former and that is an extraordinary claim given the cross cultural evidence accumulated since Piaget’s first observations that the same developmental sequence occurs in all groups tested, in some taking longer to demonstrate that particular concept than Western children such as Piaget’s own but in known substantially earlier. The simple point made by TokyoBayer is that bright kids, exposed to the concept in question many times, able to absorb other concepts easily, cannot grasp that one before they are developmentally ready to do so. That readiness cannot be significantly rushed. I don’t care how much you try to teach a three year old to read, they won’t master that skill until their brain is also developmentally mature enough to learn it.
IF you are claiming it can be, then that extraordinary claim would require extraordinary evidence to support it.
Yes within a range; “wildly” is a relative thing.
Back to object permanence … most kids will develop the concept around seven to eight months of age. Yes, it can happen a bit earlier or a bit later, but not because of how much a parent has tried to teach the kid the concept … the experiences that trigger in a child developmentally ready to learn it it don’t need to be taught, they are near impossible to avoid (and occur whether a child is sighted or not, deaf or not …) Why not much earlier? the necessary brain wiring to do sohas to develop.
The point of Occam’s Razor isn’t to prove anything. It’s just about making starting assumptions. The simplest explanation is most likely, and more complex explanations need to be proven before the simplest can be discarded. That’s all it is, I don’t offer it as proof of anything.
I was not suggesting otherwise or comparing you to my misguided parents. I was hesitant to discuss your daughter at all because of something like this and asked you not to take it the wrong way. You brought your daughter into this discussion and I would have been wiser not to mention her even indirectly. But obviously you like others have some kind of emotional reaction to this subject.
Which is the point made by the authors of Einstein Never Used Flashcards. The trap which many parents fall into is trying to push kids into reading faster or memorizing more animal names or whatever. It doesn’t do anything for the kids, and just burns them out if pushed.
What a parent or educator *can *do is to be aware of the child’s capabilities and find ways to encourage curiosity or confidence building within those capabilities and to provide the child with exposure to things just a little beyond their capabilities, in such a way to encourage growth, but without frustrating the child.
Also by being aware that most babies will develop separation anxiety; knowing that it’s generally the strongest is the 8 to 12 months or so range, but that it will get better in time, then the parents can take steps to help decrease the stress which the baby feels, and which will help speed up the naturally occurring decrease in anxiety. Don’t force babies to do to strangers right away. Even if the strange is Grandma. Watch for the baby to look to you and give reassurance. Etc.
This is another reason why TriPolar’s argument is unsatisfying. If one truly believed it were a matter of simply learning something, then more parents would push kids before their brains are wired in that way.
I understand that children aren’t born with the capability of abstract thought, and many other capabilities that develop over time. What I’m asking for is proof of the alternate concept such as Piaget’s. That’s what’s missing in this conversation, and I’ve asked over and over again. The test with the glasses of water which has been referenced so many times cannot possibly be used to make the determination which is being claimed. I’d be very interested in finding out how Piaget’s or anyone elses claims have been proven. We can’t see inside children’s heads to find out how they are working, or why. So parlor tricks won’t do the task. I suspect it something much more complex than has been described, and simply attributing the level of mental development in children to a few stages is an oversimplified approach.
I also suspect that Piaget did ground breaking research that disproved a bunch of older theories that had no scientific basis. He may have pioneered research into this field which has greatly enhanced our knowledge of childhood development. But somehow by questioning this general concept I am goring a sacred ox. I’ll just draw more resentment by speculating why, so I won’t do it here. But the way to counter my argument is with facts. So far, you and a few others have given reasonable responses. Others are insisting it must be true because they read it in a book and it satisfies their subjective observations, which is probably the methodology in childhood studies that Piaget was trying to counter in the first place.
This is why you are simply shouting from the sidelines. You’re summarily rejecting what child developmental psychologists have concluded and you want us to do all of your hard work for you when you apparently can’t even be arsed enough to become familiar with the material yourself.
My son is in the middle of his terrible twos, a period in which reason takes back seat to “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.” At some point it is no longer the parent’s responsibility to cater to the child. Likewise, in a discussion, simply shouting “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO” is not satisfying.
I’ve offered to explore to find alternative solutions and you are ignoring them. What else exactly do you want? My son is unable to answer this question, but perhaps you could.
What do you want? For someone to teach you child development, when you admittedly don’t study the material?
Go read the book I quoted from above, about Einstein never used flashcards. Then come back and we can have a intelligent conversation.
The claim is simple: children do not master the concept of conservation of volume until they have mastered other certain other concepts first and the sequence is rarely mastered before a particular age range. There is no way to test concept of conservation of volume other than some variant of that glasses of water test because that is the concept being tested: is the volume conserved when it is transfered between containers of different shapes? The answer under a certain age is consistent across cultures and experiences: no, the volume changes when moved to another container. How else would you test the concept?
Conservation of number comes before conservation of volume and this study shows how certain brain networks need to mature before the concept can mastered. I cannot find a study that documents further maturation of those or other networks as conservation of volume becomes a more common milestone but would be shocked if those changes did not exist.
Of course it is fair to dispute Piaget’s stage theory and written in stone it aint. Hard-edged stages have mostly given way to hard-wired constraints of variation based on experiences in a more fuzzy edged developmental progression. Some readiness for the concepts can be seen in testing before the skills are readily used and therefore easily observed.
Please note however: despite successfully teaching some concrete-operational problems in a specific context marginally earlier than expected the children could still not generalize the concept. It’s been tried and the edge can be pushed, but only so far.
If you want details of how the components of object permanence development get teased out and critiqued then try your hand at reading this article. Yes it gets complex, and those studies hardly scratch the surface as faces are processed as a very special class of objects and not just by the features like height and color. Some of that complexity can be appreciated in this review (see sections 3 and 4).
Thank you very much DSeid. I’ve only had time to scan your references, I want to look at couple in much greater depth. I appreciate your taking the time to provide an informative response.
The problem with something this complicated is that it’s pretty much impossible to read an article on the Net and understand what’s going on.
One of the best books for the lay person is What’s Going on in There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life. To understand development in general terms, I can’t think of a better book than Pinker’s The Language Instinct, although slightly dated, and perhaps overly sympathetic to Chomski’s theory of universal grammar, it still remains the gold standard of a book written by an expert for the lay audience.
For general development, I liked Your Child’s Growing Mind: Brain Development and Learning From Birth to Adolescence and the more general Ages and Stages stages. Most of my library is in storage, so I’d have to go back to see what other books I’ve read and could recommend.
However, I think it’s pretty much a given that without some actual experience with preschoolers, then an actual discussion is pretty much impossible, especially with people who are more interested in shouting or proving someone.
