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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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If your brownies came out too crispy on top but undercooked in the center, it would make sense to bake the next batch at a lower temperature, for more time or in a different pan—but not to make all three changes at once. Realizing that you can best tell which variable matters by altering only one at a time is a cardinal principle of scientific inquiry.
Since the 1990s studies have shown that children think scientifically—making predictions, carrying out mini experiments, reaching conclusions and revising their initial hypotheses in light of new evidence. But while children can play in a way that lets them ascertain cause and effect, and even though they have a rudimentary sense of probability (eight-month-olds are surprised if you reach into a bowl containing four times as many blue marbles as white ones and randomly scoop out a fistful of white ones), it was not clear whether they have an implicit grasp of a key strategy of experimental science: that by isolating variables and testing each independently, you can gain information.
To see whether children understand this concept, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University presented 60 four- and five-year-olds with a challenge. The researchers showed the kids that certain plastic beads, when placed individually on top of a special box, made green LED lights flash and music play. Scientists then took two pairs of attached beads, one pair glued together and the other separable, and demonstrated that both pairs activated the machine when laid on the box. That raised the possibility that only one bead in a pair worked. The children were then left alone to play. Would they detach the separable pair and place each bead individually on the machine to see which turned it on?
They did, the scientists reported in September in the journal Cognition. So strong was the kids’ sense that they could only figure out the answer by testing the components of a pair independently that they did something none of the scientists expected: when the pair was glued together, the children held it vertically so that only one bead at a time touched the box. That showed an impressive determination to isolate the causal variables, says Stanford’s Noah Goodman: “They actually designed an experiment to get the information they wanted.” That suggests basic scientific principles help very young children learn about the world.
The growing evidence that children think scientifically presents a conundrum: If even the youngest kids have an intuitive grasp of the scientific method, why does that understanding seem to vanish within a few years? Studies suggest that K–12 students struggle to set up a controlled study and cannot figure out what kind of evidence would support or refute a hypothesis. One reason for our failure to capitalize on this scientific intuition we display as toddlers may be that we are pretty good, as children and adults, at reasoning out puzzles that have something to do with real life but flounder when the puzzle is abstract, Goodman suggests—and it is abstract puzzles that educators tend to use when testing the ability to think scientifically. In addition, as we learn more about the world, our knowledge and beliefs trump our powers of scientific reasoning. The message for educators would seem to be to build on the intuition that children bring to science while doing a better job of making the connection between abstract concepts and real-world puzzles.
This article was originally published with the title More Than Child's Play.
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28 Comments
Add CommentPerhaps changing one variable at a time is good for kids.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut as a retired chemist I must insist you determine your most relevant variables and change them at random all together, using designed experiments. Now determine the most economical variables to give you maximum yield at lowest cost.
You don't need mathematical skills to do the analysis of multiple variables experiments any-more. Software like Design-ease, design expert and a lot more will determine the most efficient mix, they even design the experiments for you.
Nobody needs physicists, chemists, mathematicians biologists or climate scientists any more, every second person you meet knows every-thing.
...assuming assumptions inherent in the program...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's a bit like in Andersen's Tale about 'The Emperor's New Clothes':
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRemember?
It was a little child that debunked the delusion by mumbling aloud: 'But they aren't Wearing any clothes!'
As we grow up, we invariably get caught up with the social games people play: especially the dating & mating games use up an enormous space in our brain computers, as soon as adolescence sets in! Most of our schooling throughout our first two or three decades entails far too much outdated curriculum ballast; no wonder we super- social animals don't see the wood for the trees amongst our all-too-human hullaballooing! A playful, philosophical stance of 'what have we here?' should apply to all our human activities,natural science included.
For a fresh look at our more and more illusionary human nutrition game, welcome at Youthevity.com
While women tend to mature intellectually at about 18 years of old, men tend to mature intellectually at about 28 years of age. The more complex and advanced a human is the later he or she matures intellectually (ability to reason and think logically is maximized). Philosophers have long recognized the aforementioned. The results of the study may, in actuality, confirm the aforementioned if examined closely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe opening scenario in this article is really a bad example to use, since anyone who has any experience baking knows that, if your brownies are undercooked in the middle and overcooked at the edges, you need to reduce the temperature AND extend the cooking time for them to come out right. If you just change one, your edges will be burnt by the time the middle's done.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my experience no adult is intellectually mature until at least 50 years of age.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI could almost agree with this article. The Global Warmists and their Climatologist apostles certainly seem to have diminished scientific thought processes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBased on the last SA article I read where the "missing" heat from the last decade is in the deep ocean, their theory here is possible. Their lack of scientific thought is they completely dismiss the possibility their gerrymandered computer models might actually be wrong and the observed heat is in fact real and there is no missing heat because it was never there. Eliminating a likely possibility simply because you don't want it to be true, does show diminished capacity to think scientifically.
Another example is the recent NASA report on how Aliens, as in Aliens from another planet could zip by earth and wipe all humans out because any being that could produce CO2 so indiscriminately and cause global warming must be a danger to the rest of the universe. So because of our CO2 and the alien's perception we don't care about nature we should be killed off. I can certainly see the scientific thought in this.
Not sure where people said we dont need scientists. What we don't need are scientists who use their skills to promote something they have not actually proven and use "science" as a way to prove what they believe as true instead of discovering results and forming conclusions from those.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@GregMS: The perceived age of mental maturity seems to go up with our own age, doesn't it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWould you prefer to teach the children that little fairies created the world and all our problems can be solved by appeasing them?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientific thinking does not create problems. It solves problems. It even solves the ones created by ignorant people like you.
Btw, without science, where would your greedy oil-guzzling administration get its power? No science = NO OIL. :-)
ha ha ha so it does
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHa ha ha, so it does.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi am really reeeeally smaht.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisreally smaht.
... smaht.
hi
Perhaps it is an illusion that children think more scientifically when younger than when older. Younger children may simply be less able to recognize or think about more than one variable at a time, and therefore are not cognitively ready to vary multiple variables at the same time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhich, or course, is always the scientist who disagrees with you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe ability to think declines as you go to the shrink
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHoly cow, Ryan, where's your sense of sarcasm?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a human being, I am grateful for all the scientists that have helped create medicines, electricity and such. Schools get us ready for life, and science is such a art in the creative way of thinking....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKids are more 'present' and 'aware' of each detail when they investigate. They are not interrupted or clouded with the millions of alternate connections that adults have. They are still building their neural connections and therefore have a greater sense of wonder, which does not inhibit their process. Adults 'think' more and children 'do' more without the conscious thinking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo priddseren what about the rest of the evidence? Are you going to dismiss that because you disagree with one part? Is the measured increase in CO2 in the atmosphere some kind of mistake? Is the decrease in ice at the North Pole and in glaciers all over the planet some readily explainable natural variation? And all those palaeoclimatic correlations between CO2 and global temeprature are they just some kind of statistical error?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientific thinking? Not on the evidence of your post. More like wishful thinking!
Priddseren: In the UK muslim communities are demanding they would like to be doctors, but science is against their religion. They believe they can be doctors and practice medicine, without studying science. After all you use a phone, and you dont know how it works. There is some truth in this argument. As I stated I am a retired chemist, when I first started work as a laboratory assistant every single person in that capacity had at least a BSc in chemistry. When I reached retirement, not a single laboratory assistant had any more than a high school certificate. They most often did not know what they were doing or why (we did try and explain, some were just not interested - were here for the money) The laboratory assistants still did a good job, but could not interpret their results. When things did not meet spec. they came to us for a decision. Its all about saving money, ie. increasing productivity and the big man at the top getting an extremely large bonus (since he alone achieved this productivity increase).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe current rage emails scientists receive. In Australia on television an ignorant politician who was a book-keeper screamed at the chief scientist to shut up, after asking him what field of science he had specialised in (he knew). It was not climate science, so he had no right to express any opinion, however Barnaby was competent enough to categorically say that climate change is not a man made phenomenon and no action was needed as no threat existed.
You don't have to categorically say we don't need scientists, actions prove it. If you have read my other posts you will know I always ask scientists not to do anything to improve the human situation. No new drugs, no new technologies, nothing to increase man's lifespan or save him from death. Life-spans have already started to fall.
A scientist should work only to satisfy his craving for knowledge.
When you use the word proven, to whose satisfaction? Yours.
If scientists want to do anything to save our life sustaining planet, they should be creating a bacteria or virus to sterilise the human population. I am not asking for a Homo sapien Myxomatosis virus.
Perhaps the issue is not the number of variables but how we are taught to look at facts. A child taught that "facts" in a religious text are superior to those derived by experiments likely will have difficulty with the scientific method.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's one way to look at it; copying the behavior of adults and the school curicula. By the time children reach highschool intuitively playing, curiosity is vanished ( I am exagerating here). It only comes back now and then with cool gadgets. Those who experiment playfully scientific do it without manuals; others read manuals. With other words it can be preserved if the conditions are preserved. There's a simple solution ask any kid why it doesn't play anymore and it will gaze at you if your stupid. It tells you exactly how people around them behave and what the norm is. One lesson is that nature provide us with the best skills. We get them denied and later someone gives you back something with a big smile; that very something that already possesed. That't why we have deviators and mainstream.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems possible that a child, newly arrived at a totally alien environment (outside the womb), urgently needs to understand it, and the scientific method is probably hard-wired to some extent into our minds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs we grow up and increase our knowledge of the world, we may well transition into a "recipe" mental mode, where we mostly use known methods to achieve our purposes.
Since the present world is changing at an unprecedented speed, maybe we should invest in educational methods that keep our early "scientist" more active. A "rubber stamp" mind is very ill-suited to the modern world...
It's true; manipulating one factor at a time is costly and provides less information than a statistical analysis of all variables moving with respect to each other (Design of Experiments). It's difficult to do designed experiments from home without a notebook handy and an inordinate amount of time to conduct randomized trials, but that's what is done in science. At home, seeing the effect that modulating one variable has on the outcome is about the best that can be done.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYoung kids are less inhibited than adults, that leads them to explore more. The younger kids are the less inhibitions they have. We learn to build up inhibitions as we get older, but if they get knocked down again, it is harder to build them up again. As the saying goes, you will not enter into (scientist's) Heaven unless you become as one of these.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClever effort to sneak in gender bigotry in the guise of scientific discussion. Too bad you chose an actual science news source instead of Fox News. Now piss off and let the grown-ups talk
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice to ask why the shift in learning from the experimental child to the strung out student. We think that not all analysis is appropriately used. When we analyze learning with labrats we find it is fastest when repeating the task if done wrong and reward if done right. The problem is that this analysis when it becomes a methodology turns adaptable thinking agents off. As the top ranked Finns are telling us kids need to play more to learn more. Don't turn off experimenting; Einstein played with his muscles, at least that's how he described his methods to Hadamard, and Feynman played with everything.
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