7 ms·
Fifteen years ago I went to a museum exhibit on Reggio Emilia teaching methods that I still think about once a week or so. (Reggio Emilia is similar to Montess
by paulgerhardt 2y ago
Fifteen years ago I went to a museum exhibit on Reggio Emilia teaching methods that I still think about once a week or so. (Reggio Emilia is similar to Montessori in that it is child-led exploration but different in that encourages multiple cross-modal forms of expression to aid comprehension.)
The Reggio Emilia exhibit featured children performing a cross-modal exercise of drawing the sounds of various types of shoes walking down stairs to illustrate the "Hundred Languages of Children" concept. It showed how kids translate auditory experiences into visual ones - high heels would been drawn with spikey patterns and construction boots would be big wavey ones. This is reminiscent of the Bouba-Kiki effect. But other smaller nuances such as duration translating to span and loudness to magnitude.
I took away a fascinating insight from childhood cognition: children effortlessly bridge sensory modalities, an ability that often diminishes in adults to the point that asking an adult to “draw this sound” or “build something that feels like this smell” is met with a blank look but which a child is often completely game to try. Tasking an adult with a cross-modal assignment literally does not compute.
This cross-modal perception revealed that children possess a remarkable synesthetic intuition, using diverse forms of expression to understand and interpret the world—an ability I had completely forgotten as an adult, which hindered my communication with young children in early education environments.
It highlighted the importance of nurturing cross modal communication styles and once one notices it (like in say Mr. Rogers opening ritual to use multiple queues to engage children’s parasympathetic nervous system) one unlocks a whole new vocabulary with not just children but adults. It’s been a powerful tool in my creative toolbox since.
- spencerchubb 2y agoI wonder if the ability diminishes in adults, or if adults are more inhibited and worried about looking foolish. Try the same experiment with adults after drinking alcohol!
- sethammons 2y agoIf you take this picture and ask adults and kids which way the bus is traveling, kids get it right more often than adults https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-way-bus-going-why-adults-fail-kids-pass-simple-bailey-mlod https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-way-bus-going-why-adult... Spoilers: adults prune information for more efficient processing and in doing so lose information
- mopierotti 2y agoI don't think this is a good example. The bus is clearly a simplified representation. If the answer/explanation given was actually correct then you'd also expect the bus to have other details like side view mirrors. Edit: I hate to dwell on this too much, but even if a door and mirrors were visible, the bus could be in reverse. This seems to be more of a case of accidentally picking the intended answer due to a lack of knowledge. (Of levels of abstraction in representation and of vehicle design.) That said, I don't necessarily disagree with the underlying point being made.
- janniehater 2y ago[dead]
- soared 2y agoOr because kids are very familiar with busses and adults are not.
- bowsamic 2y agoInterestingly I got it instantly but I’ve used busses far more in my adult life than as a child
- dkdbejwi383 2y agoWhy would kids be more familiar with busses than adults?
- xattt 2y ago> Why are [large vehicles] so exciting to a kid? Perhaps it is obvious: they are loud, big, fast, complex, powerful. There is the element of danger. Adaptively, there must be a survival advantage for children who are curious about loud, large, fast beings and objects. https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/megafauna-mecha-fauna-machines-nature/ https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry...
- mock-possum 2y agoI think that’s it - they know they don’t know the ‘right’ way to draw sound, so instead of just doing whataver occurs to them, they wait, for fear of doing it ‘wrong.’ The concept that the only ‘wrong’ thing to do is to do nothing is a real important thing to internalize as an adult - not always where professional work is concerned, but nearly always where artistic pursuits are concerned. You’re doing it ‘right’ if you’re doing it.
- barrenko 2y agoWell, adults are RLHF'ed kids.
- anonymous_sorry 2y agoAs a kid I instinctively associated different days of the week with colours. This is a form of synaesthesia. As an adult I never think this way, and even when I try can only even remember one of the colour associations (Friday was orange). My cod-biological explanation is that a child's brain is still forming connections and the process of becoming an adult involves pruning many of these connections to become more focused and efficient.
- anbardoi 2y agoWhile reading this comment, I was thinking "tuesday is blue, friday? Definitely orange" and then read you saying (Friday was orange) a split second later
- automatic6131 2y ago+1 for tuesday being blue. Is Wednesday green?
- mandmandam 2y agoIf Tuesday is blue, Wednesday is green, and Friday is orange then it would makes sense that Thursday is yellow, Monday is violet, Sunday is indigo and Saturday is red... Nature abhors a vacuum, but it loves a rainbow.
- jspash 2y agoTuesday rhymes with blue. Not to mention "Blue Tuesday" is a phrase used quite often. You might be associating orange with Friday because it makes you think of the sun and going outdoors? It's all very interesting. Even more so because I don't think of days/colours. My mind gives the days size and mass. ie. starting with Sunday (I'm American) the day is small. And as the week progresses the days get larger, heavier and denser. Until Saturday, which is a big fat puffy ball of "day". You can do what you want with it and it will just be there and be your friend. I love Saturdays.
- redman25 2y agoHmm, my first thought was that Friday was purple. Tuesday is definitely blue though.
- npteljes 2y agoI'd say that adults worry, and that's because they are explicitly taught as children to label such behavior nonsense and discard it.
- mistermann 2y agoMy theory is that a lot of capabilities remain in the hardware stack, but they are made inaccessible by the software stack (culture mainly, but also that type of media we consume, which can act as a catalyst...or not, if the right kind isn't present/popular).
- avg_dev 2y agoyou know, i think this skill can be learned. i used to definitely have very little ability to "bridge sensory modalities", but i've been studying music and performance as a hobby somewhat seriously for about 6 years now. and i now feel like i have much more of that ability than i did before. i probably had it as a kid, just as you were saying, but i am definitely well into adulthood now :) (there is a radio program i listen to where the guy talks about the music he plays and the context and he explains many things in this sort of "bridging sensory modalities" sort of way. and i used to always think, "that is just some straight up nonsense that he is saying." but now, i often see what he is saying very literally...)
- DaoVeles 2y agoHuh, that is pretty cool. I mean I wouldn't have any problem with trying to do that "Draw a sound", "What colour is the concept of the wind" etc. Maybe I'm just odd but it is something I just never really lost with time, I suppose.
- anal_reactor 2y ago>This cross-modal perception revealed that children possess a remarkable synesthetic intuition The more I learn about children the more it seems like childhood is basically 20-year-long acid trip with a bit of amphetamine here and there.