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What's Going on in Your Child's Brain When You Read Them a Story?
- newman8r 8y agoAnyone who's interested in this might find the field of cognitive narratology interesting as well, he's a nice resource: http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/Cognitive_Narratology http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/Cognitive_Narr...
- craftyguy 8y agoHN's duplicate article detector is broken. This was previously posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17150550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17150550 The url is identical. I've noticed this happening quite a bit. Here's another example, in this case an article I posted then someone posting the identical article a few hours later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17138682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17138682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17143429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17143429 @dang, what gives?
- andrewla 8y agoMy understanding is that if a post did not get a lot of attention, then the duplicate will be allowed through. > Are reposts ok? > If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok. > Please don't delete and repost the same story; accounts that do that eventually lose submission privileges. Deletion is intended for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- craftyguy 8y agoOk, so how do you explain this one then? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17154175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17154175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17157649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17157649 Both posts are ~6 hours apart, each one has a decent number of points and comments, and each one points to the exact same url.
- qznc 8y agoAfaik HN checks its cache for duplicates. This means if the cache is used up by something else (e.g. a long discussion about GDPR) the old submission gets flushed out quite early and a duplicate submission after only a short time is possible.
- tannhaeuser 8y agoGDPR'd in EU.
- baxtr 8y agoNot for me if I accept the first privacy screen
- atmosx 8y agoThere is a revoke agreement option too, haha amazing :-)
- hanoz 8y agoIt looks like they've given more thought than most to GDPR, but how on earth they reached the conclusion that giving refuseniks nothing but the text would keep them legal, I do not know.
- jon-wood 8y agoI assume the text only version doesn’t have any targeted advertising or tracking embedded in it, which means there’s nothing to consent to being recorded and retained about you.
- asaph 8y agoIs the visitor's IP address still recorded in a web server access log? If so, does that need consent? I'm genuinely asking. I'm not a GDPR expert.
- seba_dos1 8y agoHere's the text only version you get redirected to when you don't agree to profiling: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=611609366 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=611609366 It's second time I've seen something like that today. The first one was even minimally, yet aesthetically styled. It's awesome! I wouldn't expect GDPR to increase UX of the Web so much :)
- argiope 8y agoHere's a link to the text only version: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=611609366 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=611609366
- lallysingh 8y agoGot a version with pictures?
- tobltobs 8y agoI prefer the version which enables the publisher to pay for his cost.
- astura 8y agoBoth versions are hosted on NPR.org.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- PuffinBlue 8y agoI prefer the other one where they do so without farming my personal data.
- stickfigure 8y agoI'm pretty sure that what goes on in my 9-month-old's brain when I read him a story is: "Mmmmmm, that book looks delicious."
- jedberg 8y agoDon't worry, all of us are in that boat. 1/2 the time is spent keeping the book away from him.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoOT: Teach him sign language and he can tell you he wants to eat the book long before he can vocally do the same! I recommend starting at 6 months.
- jedberg 8y agoHeh, maybe. We tried teaching both my kids ASL at 6 months. The first one managed to get four of five signs before she could talk. The second one has zero, but then again, he doesn't really talk yet either.
- sharkweek 8y agoDo second kids typically start talking later? I have two separate friends with two kids each. Both their oldest kids learned to talk pretty early, their second in both cases were much later.
- zrail 8y agoMy anecdata agrees. My brother in law's first two kids were born 11 months apart so their developmental stages were pretty synced up, but their third definitely took a lot longer to start talking. His older brothers just spoke for him and understood what he wanted without him having to speak, so he didn't.
- Apofis 8y ago
- giarc 8y agoI wonder if a TV show with static images and spoken words would still induce the zombie like behaviour of kids? Would this be more beneficial over animation?
- giancarlostoro 8y agoSorry to say this but that sounds like radio? Though also there are audio books nowadays.
- dice 8y agoYour radio has pictures?
- js992 8y agoThe article says that audio alone causes kids to struggle harder with understanding. The whole point of what he is asking is to meet in the middle where kids can understand and get the most out of the media.
- giarc 8y agoBingo - I have a 3 year old and the effect TV has on them is astonishing... complete trance. We read books every night and she gets really engaged and remembers very specific details weeks later. As every parent can attest to, there are just times when putting a kid in front of a TV is helpful (airplane rides, when caring for other children, when you need a break etc) so it would be nice to retain some brain activity, or as you say, meet in the middle.
- blowski 8y agoIn the UK, the BBC runs a program like this. People read kids stories and they show the static images from the book.
- saalweachter 8y agoI believe that also was (is?) the format of Reading Rainbow.
- jedberg 8y agoOne thing I've noticed as a trend in children's books lately is that a lot of them are "novelizations" of single episodes of cartoons. For example, you can find a bunch of Star Wars Clone Wars books, and it turns out each book is an episode in the series. I discovered this because we got my kid the books first, which I read to her a bunch of times, and then one day we sat down to watch the show together, which I'd actually never seen, and realized that the first two episodes I'd already read to her as books. What was really cool though was that she had a much deeper understanding of those first couple episodes than the subsequent episodes, and actually preferred the books to the show. Anyway, my whole point is that my single point of data seems to support this research -- that she processed better when read to.
- wirrbel 8y agoI read the book editions of the first 3 Star Wars Movie (the Luke ones) and did not see the movies for years. This was in the nineties.
- dmlorenzetti 8y agoAll three versions came from the Web site of Canadian author Robert Munsch. Hearing Robert Munsch read his own stories can be a revelation. He puts so much energy into the reading, in a way that kids seem to really enjoy. He also often deviates from the published text. Listening to him made me willing to take a lot more risks as a reader. I read "Paper Bag Princess" to my daughter's kindergarten class, and then played them Munsch's rendition [0]. Whenever I go back, the kids ask if they can hear an author reading their own book. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIPrb-sA6Uo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIPrb-sA6Uo
- sevensor 8y ago> He also often deviates from the published text. I'm so glad to hear that! Especially with books I've read them many times, I'm going to get bored if I don't start taking liberties with the text.
- b0rsuk 8y agoThere's a hilarious trick you can pull off. Insert references and made-up characters into stories you read. I got the idea from an audiobook, which described someone who kept inserting "spotted female mule" into stories he read. See what's the most outrageous but harmless change you can get away with.
- codetrotter 8y ago> See what's the most outrageous but harmless change you can get away with. I don’t think I could keep a straight face for more than a couple of minutes at most if I tried to insert my own ideas into a story XD
- b0rsuk 8y agoAt least you do have a sense of humor. I know too many people who don't smile, and definitely don't laugh out loud.
- 8y ago
- cvaidya1986 8y agoProbably could my mom/dad pick something age appropriate next time?
- jonbarker 8y agoPediatricians I know can basically immediately tell the difference between a kid raised by the TV/phone and one primarily read/spoken to. Obvious differences in verbal ability.
- dvdhnt 8y agoThat’s pretty crazy considering smart phones have become ubiquitous relatively recently. I like to think my kids enjoy devices and digital stimuli in moderations, and do try to read to them often, but I wish there was a decent way of checking their development.
- keerthiko 8y agoNot a parent so I'm not familiar with working with the constraints, but something a friend of mine raising kids champions: limit digital interaction to "activity, creation and expression", and use other media for consumption. So let them doodle, play puzzle games, write stuff/create music/etc, but don't give them free access to youtube videos, cartoons, etc. When they want to consume something, prefer offline stuff.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- djrogers 8y ago> That’s pretty crazy considering smart phones have become ubiquitous relatively recently. They’ve been a thing for 8-10 years, and the window for kids to be influenced this way is only a couple of years, so we’ve had several cohorts of kids grow from 1-4 in the smartphone era.
- gowld 8y agoWhy are you lumping in TV with phone? TV has far more verbal aspect than most thing one does on a phone (except YouTube)
- 8y ago
- keerthiko 8y agoThis corroborates my hypothesis for why the majority of book readers like their books better than visual renditions of the same (HP, LOTR, etc), because they use their imagination to construct the world and characters and voices when reading, and thus find a more appealing interpretation for every aspect of the story, whereas a directed audio-visual experience is unlikely to match my impression as well. For example, if I'm a PoC I'm likely to see some of the characters as PoC as well even if they're not explicitly described so. So many other things like "what do these dragons look like" and "how tall is this character relative to others" etc. Because we were actively involved in creating the world, we'd be more attached to it too.
- 2sk21 8y agoThis is so true! I am rarely impressed by movie versions of my favorite books. On a related note, I have been reading Judea Pearl's new book, "The book of Why" (truly wonderful book incidentally). I think that stories must, in some way, help us learn counterfactual reasoning. That is, help us create alternate versions of reality to conduct "what if" experiments in our mind.
- b0rsuk 8y agoThis is usually true and I arrived at it independently, but I also think sometimes another person's visualization is more impressive than yours. Watching a movie of a book you like can be fun, just don't get your hopes too high.
- ghusbands 8y agoI'm aphantasic and still prefer books, in part because they provide the motivations, thoughts and plans of characters, along with other not-easily-visually-portrayed elements.
- anonu 8y agotldr: the old school way is still the best. Read a real book to your kid.
- brylie 8y agoDidn't consent to third-party tracking, and then couldn't access the article. I hope that this doesn't become a widespread pattern, where companies disallow access to services when people decline to be tracked/profiled, now that we have an increased legal mandate for clarity and user rights online. NPR, being a public benefit non-profit, should really act in the public interest, and allow people to access the content without being subject to surveillance from ad companies and social media.
- megaman22 8y agoWe're reaping what we have sown.
- manmal 8y agoIf 3rd party tracking is not arguably required for them to provide the service, then this behavior is not valid, if I understand the GDPR wording correctly.
- po1nter 8y agoI didn't give them my consent so I got redirected to the plain text version of the website on which you can read the article without being tracked https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=611609366 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=611609366
- ghusbands 8y agoAs long as one can find it. It's not trivial when you're just thrown to the front page and there's no obvious search feature.
- DanBC 8y agoI don't understand the point you're making. Before: 3rd party tracking happens; you don't know about it; you don't get the chance to decline to read the article before 3rd party tracking happens. Now: 3rd party happens if you allow it to happen; you know when it's going to happen; you get the choice to allow it or not. How is this worse?
- dharma1 8y agoBought my 8yo son an Echo for his birthday, we usually read together but he also loves the unabridged Harry Potter series read by Stephen Fry on Audible. Such a good reader, fun for tens of hours when parents have a sore throat :)
- assblaster 8y agoAs someone who has studied extremely detailed information for most of my life, I have found to this day that the most useful presentation of information is text coupled with diagram. Which makes more sense to you? Reading a wall of text, or looking at a properly formatted table and graph where your brain can study and make sense of trends? Would you rather have a wall of text or audio description of the human arm, or would you rather have one illustration to distill the relevant features? Children's brains, I assume, work like adult brains, and this article agrees.
- mncharity 8y agoI created some animated science education videos and guerrilla-street-usability tested them, mostly with adults. As a hobby project. I was surprised by the dramatic impact of reading-listening interference and cognitive load. It turned out to be well known, but lacking that background, I found it bizarre to have an character and simple environment appear, read text on the screen, and then when I hit pause, and asked for feedback, get "well, you might add mention of <thing that was just moments ago said and shown>". And at least once, when I replayed the same video, get "oh yes, this version is much better". As VR/AR UI/UX design becomes a thing, there's a body of expertise around multimedia learning that will need to be integrated.