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In Brief
- Learning the meaning of color and number words is difficult for children, in part because of how we use these words in everyday English.
- Parents can help their children grasp these concepts more quickly by stating the color or number after the noun it describes, such as “the balloon is red.”
- Kids who master colors and numbers at an earlier age go on to do better in school later in life.
Subject 046M, two years old, was seated nervously across from me at the table, his hands clasped tightly together in his lap. He appeared to have caught an incurable case of the squirms. I resisted the urge to laugh and leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially. “Today we’re going to play a game with Mr. Moo.” I produced an inviting plush cow from behind my back. “Can you say hi to Mr. Moo?”
At the Stanford University lab in which I work with cognitive scientist Michael Ramscar, we study how children go about what is arguably the most vital project in their schooling—learning language. Over the past several years we have been particularly taken with the question of how kids learn a small but telling piece of that vast complex: color words. We want to know how much they know, when they know it and whether we can help them get there faster.
This article was originally published with the title Why Johnny Can't Name His Colors.
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1 Comments
Add CommentThe author points out that children who learn number early do better in math later in school. Perhaps, the cause and effect are backwards. Mathematically gifted children learn numbers earlier, rather than the other way around.
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