[HN Gopher] Preschool children rarely seek data when observation...
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Preschool children rarely seek data when observation and testimony
conflict
Author : DocFeind
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-07-10 19:29 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
| daenz wrote:
| Unless I am missing it, they don't report the results by gender,
| but they do by age. Is this suggesting that the results were
| identical across gender?
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Is this suggesting that the results were identical across
| gender?
|
| I suppose you mean sex, since using genders for preschoolers
| would be ridiculous.
|
| Secondly no, it's not suggesting that. It's simply suggesting
| they may not have grouped their results by sex, maybe because
| that would have made the groups too small to yield useful data,
| or because they simply weren't interested in that.
|
| As an aside, you shouldn't post-factum partition your data by
| characteristics you did not set out to compare, because then
| you might try height, intelligence, hair color, etc. until you
| find some characteristic that yields differences of
| "statistical significance" even though you've just been trying
| them all until you found something that differentiated some
| groups by random chance.
| dtrain2017 wrote:
| So, pre-school children are more likely to investigate a conflict
| if the testimony is provided before the observation than if it is
| provided after. Basically, if you want to avoid confirmation bias
| you'll need to form your own opinion ahead of the event.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I think they should have done this with an incentive. Basically,
| don't ask "If I want to make the music box play, which figurine
| should I use?" But tell the children before the sorting task that
| if they make the music box play you'll give them a marshmallow.
| Without an incentive the kids may just not care enough to
| investigate.
| yorwba wrote:
| I think making the music box play is supposed to be rewarding
| in itself.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| Better yet, threaten to punish them. It's been shown that
| negative reinforcement is more effective than positive
| [deleted]
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| It's wrong to threaten to punish a child just for the fun of
| it, even if "fun" is cloaked in a scientific study.
| ascar wrote:
| Common mistake: Negative reinforcement is when you take a
| negative stimulus away to reinforce the desired behavior.
|
| What you're describing is positive punishment.
|
| Also nicely explained in TBBT: https://youtu.be/gLp_aLMm5qQ
| tpoacher wrote:
| well it shouldn't. makes much more sense to use negative
| reinforcement as a term to describe a reinforcing stimulus
| of a negative nature.
|
| optimal terminology has never been our strong point as a
| scientific community.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Could this have more to do with the fact that pre-school aged
| children have the attention span of a puppy because their brains
| aren't fully developed yet?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Or perhaps because the intuitions of pre-school-aged children
| are still forming; there's a lot they don't know, and the world
| is new and exciting, so scepticism would mostly just rob them
| of learning opportunities.
| nicoburns wrote:
| From what I remember of being that age, I think I just didn't
| notice things. As an adult (and as an older child) I often
| get a "that doesn't seem right" feeling/intuition. As a very
| young child I didn't know what normal was or what the
| important parts of experiences were so I was much more open
| to things and just went with them.
| starkd wrote:
| I don't think pre-school aged children even know where to look
| for the data yet.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I think they do: Ask their parents or teachers.
|
| But remembering it long enough to get away from the person
| who told them the fact and then ask a different person...
| That's another story. I'd think far too much would be
| happening for them to bother remembering to ask.
|
| Being able to look it up independently of another human makes
| it a lot easier to verify information immediately, so I'm not
| surprised that people who can read are more likely to verify
| info than those who can't.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| In this test the kids are sorting figures that do or don't
| activate a music box. The box is left next to them so they
| could use the box to test the figures prior to sorting them
| or they could rely on what an experimenter told them (white
| figures activate the box) or what they observed when a
| different experimenter was actually using the toy. What the
| title means by "seek data" is "Did the kids try the figurines
| on the box themselves?"
| jkepler wrote:
| They also get a ton of data about the world through free
| play, especially outside in nature, but they experience it as
| play, not data gathering.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yet, this describes plenty of older people as well (teens/20s).
| WJW wrote:
| I know this is a popular preconception and it feeds into all
| our biases about lazy youth that just needs to get off our
| lawn, but any teenager will readily out-think a preschooler.
| [deleted]
| cryptogeek123 wrote:
| Great. Let's quickly indoctrinate them with CRT.
| ElViajero wrote:
| > Elementary school children significantly increased their
| exploration of the dolls when their intuitions had been
| contradicted as compared to when they had been confirmed,
| frequently picking up the smallest and the biggest doll
| concurrently to compare their relative weight--a direct test of
| the claim they had been given. Preschool children rarely engaged
| in this behavior, whether their intuitions had been confirmed or
| contradicted.
|
| Interesting study. Good to make clear that this does not apply to
| older children. Older children will verify any surprising claims.
| On the other hand they suffer, like adults, of confirmation bias.
| If the information fits their expectation they will not check is
| veracity. I guess that confirmation bias is just an efficient way
| of learning about the world, do not waste time if things seem to
| fit your current understanding of the world.
| jacinda wrote:
| > I guess that confirmation bias is just an efficient way of
| learning about the world, do not waste time if things seem to
| fit your current understanding of the world.
|
| Interesting observation - in this light, confirmation bias
| could almost be considered a variant of Occam's razor.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Occam's razor is a variant of confirmation bias.
| vmception wrote:
| Check lists of other acknowledged biases, such as putting too
| much weight on earlier presented information
| jamiek88 wrote:
| To see a creature with not enough confirmation bias watch a
| horse if it encounters something even slightly usual. It will
| shy away and or investigate or refuse to move until you have
| investigated the slightly oddly positioned leaf on the path.
|
| If we did indeed check everything we nevertheless expected to
| be as usual we'd never get anything done and would get stuck in
| mega loops.
| kleton wrote:
| Horses spooked by unexpected street markings
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMyf6ewi7E8
| mrfusion wrote:
| I don't think adults are much better. "Listen to the experts" and
| all that.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| You are more likely to obtain the correct result from a
| credentialed expert than doing your own research. This should
| be clear in the ever growing landscape of unthinking people
| using "research" as a proxy for confirmation bias.
| cerved wrote:
| not just children
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