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Maybe this aren't good examples but great ones are out there. For example, even the littlest babies understand basic physics. Once they're old enough to focus,

Maybe this aren't good examples but great ones are out there. For example, even the littlest babies understand basic physics. Once they're old enough to focus, if you show them a video of a ball hitting a stack of blocks adn the blocks go flying, they don't care. But if you show even a few milliseconds' delay between the ball strike and the blocks flying, they get very, very interested indeed. By the way, the studies no doubt have controls and reasons for the way that they determine the probability that babies are paying attention to red balls because of x than because of y. These types of studies have a long history in the field. But the op-ed author is not going to go into those details.

pbhj 17y ago
"The babies were more surprised, and looked longer and more intently at the experimenter when four red balls and one white ball out of the box — a possible, yet improbable outcome — than when four white balls and a red one were produced." I'd warrant most people know that babies respond first to the contrast of black and white and next to bright red - if the experiment worked equally with other colours then just about any other colour combination would be more notable. I do wonder if this is unique to light-pink skinned babies/parents as I suspect the reaction to red helps in locating the mothers nipple, though I'm not set on that hypothesis. "When we say that preschoolers can’t pay attention, we really mean that they can’t not pay attention: they have trouble focusing on just one event and shutting out all the rest." I disagree there too, preschoolers can focus intently on something they are interested in despite all effort to divert that attention. I suspect they don't have the ability to context switch nor really multi-task and so instead of momentarily diverting attention (multi-tasking) pending a context switch they attempt to complete the current process before interrupting. "Parents and other caregivers teach young children by paying attention and interacting with them naturally and, most of all, by just allowing them to play." What does "just allowing them to play" even mean. No toys? That's providing things, not "just". No scenery? That's providing a context. No interaction? I don't think kids really learn by just playing, they have to have experiences to play out, inspiration of their imagination, people to interact with and yes even things. The old favourite of playing with cardboard boxes is providing things (boxes) and relies on the child having been stimulated to have the experience of things to imagine the box as.

pbhj 17y ago

"The babies were more surprised, and looked longer and more intently at the experimenter when four red balls and one white ball out of the box — a possible, yet improbable outcome — than when four white balls and a red one were produced." I'd warrant most people know that babies respond first to the contrast of black and white and next to bright red - if the experiment worked equally with other colours then just about any other colour combination would be more notable. I do wonder if this is unique to light-pink skinned babies/parents as I suspect the reaction to red helps in locating the mothers nipple, though I'm not set on that hypothesis. "When we say that preschoolers can’t pay attention, we really mean that they can’t not pay attention: they have trouble focusing on just one event and shutting out all the rest." I disagree there too, preschoolers can focus intently on something they are interested in despite all effort to divert that attention. I suspect they don't have the ability to context switch nor really multi-task and so instead of momentarily diverting attention (multi-tasking) pending a context switch they attempt to complete the current process before interrupting. "Parents and other caregivers teach young children by paying attention and interacting with them naturally and, most of all, by just allowing them to play." What does "just allowing them to play" even mean. No toys? That's providing things, not "just". No scenery? That's providing a context. No interaction? I don't think kids really learn by just playing, they have to have experiences to play out, inspiration of their imagination, people to interact with and yes even things. The old favourite of playing with cardboard boxes is providing things (boxes) and relies on the child having been stimulated to have the experience of things to imagine the box as.