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I’ve heard of similar research around language use: young children tend to focus on nouns and verbs to the exclusion of adverbs, etc, so “don’t throw sand at To
by germinalphrase 5y ago
I’ve heard of similar research around language use: young children tend to focus on nouns and verbs to the exclusion of adverbs, etc, so “don’t throw sand at Tommy” may reinforce “throw sand at Tommy” as the “don’t” is subconsciously elided.
(A more effective phrasing might be ‘keep the sand on the ground’)
- lahvak 5y agoI am very skeptical about this. I remember enough from my own childhood to know that a request "Don't throw sand at Tommy" would be met with "OK, that make sense, Tommy probably does not want to have sand thrown at him" kind of reaction, while my reaction to "keep the sand on the ground" would immediately be "why? what if I want to play with it, build a sand castle from it, ...".
- germinalphrase 5y agoThe point is mostly referring to very young children - under age five. Most people don’t remember much before then, so your remembered childhood self is probably older than the demo of this argument.