Preschool Kids Spontaneously Employ the Scientific Method
Rudiments of the scientific method seen in four-year-old children.
Preschool Kids Spontaneously Employ the Scientific Method
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By Chloe McIvor of Nature magazine
Preschool children spontaneously invent experiments in their play, according to research published this month in Cognition. The findings suggest that basic scientific principles help very young brains to learn about the world.
Psychologists have been drawing a comparison between cognitive development and science for years -- an idea referred to as 'the child as scientist'. But recently scientists have been trying to discover whether this is more than just a neat analogy.
In the latest study, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and Stanford University in California presented four- to five-year-old children with a specially designed toy that lit up and played music when the child placed certain beads on it.
In cases in which the children didn't know which beads made the toy play, the researchers found that the kids tested each possibility in turn in order to find out -- much like the way in which scientists devise their experiments to test individual variables separately. Laura Schulz, one of the researchers from MIT, explains that it's the same idea that you use when trying to find out which of your keys opens a door: "You might change the position of the key, you might change the key, but you're not going to change both at once," she says.
Schulz and her team found that children seem to perform these methodical experiments only when they are given ambiguous information. One group of children were shown that each of four differently marked beads all made the toy work. The others were shown that only two of the beads worked. The children were then given the beads as two pairs -- one fixed pair and one that could be snapped apart -- and were left to play.
The researchers wanted to see whether the children would try to snap the beads apart in order to test which bead in the combination made the toy work; what they found suggests that children make decisions on the basis of the potential for gaining new information.
The result marks a key step in the evolving field of cognitive development. Schulz feels that science is no longer simply an analogy for childhood development, but that this type of play is "a fundamental precursor" to science that is seen surprisingly early on. "In a sense, everyone is capable of inquiry and discovery in these ways," Schulz explains. "What scientists do is apply it to cognitive demands that are at the very edge of human knowledge."
The team was surprised by what the children did with the inseparable pair. The toy was designed to take the bead pairs horizontally, but the children tried to test each bead separately by holding the pair vertically. So the researchers conducted a second experiment, this time giving the children only the fixed set of beads and showing them that the toy worked when it was put on the toy horizontally. The fact that the children still tested both ends of the bead pair provides evidence of ingenuity that shares common principles with science, says Schulz.
Sara Baker, a researcher at the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre, University of Bristol, UK, says she hopes that this research will improve our understanding of the capabilities of preschoolers and that it could have implications for teaching methods. "I think it's fantastic work; this is a real step forward in that it is a scientific approach to what kids understand," says Baker.
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on July 26, 2011.
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7 Comments
Add CommentNow we just need to figure out why so many adults have forgotten how to think scientifically...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuite seriously, I blame their parents. Oh, and parts of society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, really.
I could have been a genius if education didn't ruin me.......no Im serious, everyone could be something...better than who they are now! Instead of taking advantage of the period of plasticity, our generations and the ones before, have beat our unique shape out into a straight boring line! Hence everyone is a clone,give me a problem and i will ask you to give me a formula, not curious about the problem at the least. But at last a child's cognitive skills are being realized and given significance to. Im happy :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause a strong sense and ability to apply known correlations is more broadly adaptive (for survival's sake) than laboriousness fair-mindedness in testing every iteration of a situation?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThink of autistic adults. Many carry in their minds rigorously mapped-out flow charts describing human interactions- which are almost exclusively trial-and-error tested. These 'maps' are precise, not particularly emotionally biased...but slow and easily stumped by complexity.
Children find answers by building correlations from the ground up, as seen above. Adults are generally in the business of applying correlations, and when needed, working backward from them.
I think the only reason adults seem less scientific is
1) there is insufficient societal support for articulating and identifying uncertainty
2) the correlations being applied are often numerous and their interaction is often complex, and the whole process non-verbal. Thus, it is rare to have the vocabulary and time to fully explain one's thoughts, even if given the entirety of dinner time to do it.
Just my two cents.
And here is my two cents: At what point between preschool age and adulthood did we lose the ability to be methodical and have a brain that is well functioning? ......... adults have not forgotten how to think scientifically... it's just that some lack brain exercise. Exercise is not only beneficial, it is crucial, for your entire body to stay healthy and flexible. The same concept applies to your brain – something scientists call neuroplasticity – the ability of the brain to stay flexible and constantly reshaping itself, re-learning and adapting to new challenges.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice results. Given that feedback by reality check is the only way to be completely sure that your understanding is correct, it makes sense that infants (and probably animals)do so. It also makes sense that we stop checking when we are convinced that our understanding is correct. The problem for modern adults is that there are far too many ideas for us to check each one ourselves. For example, pretty much everyone trusts in the law of gravity, but how many have verified themselves that it is truly proportional to mass and inversionally proportional to the square of distance? I have not, and I have a degree in physics. So we need to have trustworthy sources of information for the things which we do not have the time or ability to check ourselves. Unfortunately, all too often we do not. Then we have the problem of figuring out which information is bad, and how to go about finding a reliable replacement. Not an easy task.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's hope they don't fall into the pill pushing trap of pychiaitry. Pills for kiddies now! yum..lets see how that affects brain development..
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