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I was thinking this at first too, because if there's no reinforcement or punishment, then the instructions to sort the figurines based on whether or not they wi

by adrusi 5y ago

I was thinking this at first too, because if there's no reinforcement or punishment, then the instructions to sort the figurines based on whether or not they will activate the music box is ambiguous — should you sort them such that other people will think they're sorted correctly or so that they actually are? But now I'm less sure. The adult giving the instructions to sort the figurines is the one who was presented as not knowing how the music box worked. They were the only adult in the room and remained in the room while the child performed the task, which would suggest to the child that they would be the one evaluating them. Since the person evaluating the child's performance was not the one giving the misleading testimony the two possible interpretations of the goal of the task shouldn't give conflicting behavioral prescriptions.

ALittleLight 5y ago
Yeah, I think the design of the experiment is good to catch this potential weakness. If it was the knowledgeable experimenter instructing the children, that could really confuse things. I think it's still potentially a source of confusion, but less of one. If you imagine that instead of sorting 4 figurines they had to sort 400, then it would be easy to see that the kids aren't going to test all of them. Too boring. They may not even go to the trouble of testing a sample of the figurines. The would need some incentive to drive them to do a bit more work than the bare minimum. If I ask my son to clean his room, and I return to discover he's done a poor job, I will not think that he doesn't understand how to clean his room. Similarly, if these kids are asked to sort figurines and they just go by what they're told (or what they observed) without testing, that doesn't necessarily mean they don't understand that testing might be useful.

by adrusi 5y ago

ALittleLight 5y ago

Yeah, I think the design of the experiment is good to catch this potential weakness. If it was the knowledgeable experimenter instructing the children, that could really confuse things. I think it's still potentially a source of confusion, but less of one. If you imagine that instead of sorting 4 figurines they had to sort 400, then it would be easy to see that the kids aren't going to test all of them. Too boring. They may not even go to the trouble of testing a sample of the figurines. The would need some incentive to drive them to do a bit more work than the bare minimum. If I ask my son to clean his room, and I return to discover he's done a poor job, I will not think that he doesn't understand how to clean his room. Similarly, if these kids are asked to sort figurines and they just go by what they're told (or what they observed) without testing, that doesn't necessarily mean they don't understand that testing might be useful.