Theories about Children's Experience Life on This Planet - Essay Example

? Children perceive the world in a very different way than adults do. They experience things in a different light mentally, and have a different understanding of how the world works. Exactly how children perceive the world is currently under debate, just as it has been for hundreds of years. There are multiple theories on how children experience life on this planet, each one different and unique in its own manner. The core-knowledge theory and the Baillargion theory are just two of these concepts, and many more oppose them. How children learn may very well remain a mystery. Despite continuous advances in technology and an increasing number of scientists studying the minds of children, there will always be some level of mystery. The way every child learns is different due to personality, learning disabilities, and even childhood. There have been studies conducted that suggest that children know things that they have not been taught by their parents. One of these things is the concept of gravity. How does a child know that when he/she pushes a block off of a platform that it will drop? These questions, and many others, are continuously being monitored and researched. Perhaps in time, dedicated research will discover that which is hidden. Adults perceive the world in a very different way than children do. They have gone through the childhood motions, and perceive things according to what they have learned over a long period of time (20 or so years). Children, on the otherhand, have a very limited knowledge of the world because of the short amount of time they have had on it. There are a number of different theories based on the functioning minds of children, and how they perceive the world around them. The core-knowledge theory is one of the most widely accepted, and was developed by both Gopnik and Meltzoff. It states that children are born with certain types of knowledge that are not taught, such as gravity and objects. ‘Most important, some of the cognitive achievements of children and adults do not result from processes of theory change, we believe, because they do not result from changes of any kind; they depend on core cognitive systems that emerge early in development and remain constant thereafter.’ (Carey, 1996). The core-knowledge theory also touches upon what a child experiences in life, whether they are 1 month old, or more than 8 months old. ‘Recently, some research in core knowledge theory has focused on children’s understanding of numbers.’ (NeoCoreTEXT, 2008). ‘Jean Piaget was one of the first developmental psychologists to examine how children think and reason.’ (Kuther, 2001). He states that if an infant 8 months old or younger can’t see an object, they won’t search for it. Infants younger than 6 months old have a much different outlook on life. They might believe that there are some ‘mystery’ objects, though, again, won’t look for them. Piaget has a test that he calls the A not B error. This error is evidence that children are not born with a lot of knowledge, but have a limited amount of it. Another widely known theory is the Baillargeon Theory. There are three widely known Baillargeon tests that have been performed to better study and observe how children perceive the world around them. One of these tests involved a screen and a box. The screen was rotated through 180 degrees several times in front of infants so that they would get used to seeing the same process over and over again. Baillargeon then place a box in front of the screen, which left open two possibilities: a possible event, and an impossible event. In the possible event, the screen rotated up, then stopped when it reached the top of the box, blocked by its solid surface. In the impossible event, the screen appeared to go up and through the full 180 degrees, moving through the solid box. Infants, even though they had never seen such things before in their lives, paid more attention to the impossible event than they did to the possible event. The same has been said for other tests that have been performed in the same manner, just with different objects and scenarios. A second test that was performed by Baillargeon involved a screen and 2 rabbits. One rabbit was tall, and the other was short. The infants ( 3 and a half and 5 and a half months) were shown how both rabbits, short and tall, traveled behind the screen and came out the otherside. After the infants became used to this sight, a window was cut in the top half of the screen. When the short rabbit went through, it vanished behind the bottom uncut half of the screen and appeared on the otherside. However, when the tall rabbit went through, it did not go behind the screen because it could be seen through the window that had been cut. As in the screen/box test, infants paid more attention to the impossible event than they did the possible one. Every theory based on cognitive studies in children has things in common, as well as things that are different. One of the most prominent differences in theories are based on how old the child has to be before certain aspects of their brain start to develop. Piaget says that children must be at least 8 months old before they develop object permanence, whereas Spelke says that they only need to be 3 months older before such a thing develops. The core-knowledge theory suggests that ‘children are much more advanced in their thinking than Piaget suggested.’ (Rakison, 2006). Different theories and different individuals have been warring with each other over who is correct and who is wrong when it comes to a child’s developing brain. They were doing it many decades ago, and they will continue to do it in this day and age. When it comes to learning mechanisms that children possess, there is evidence that suggests they learn far more rapidly from the ages of 0-12 months than at any other time in their life. How a child perceives an object, for example, is different from how a teenager will perceive an object. Objects have several different properties that need to be taken into consideration. These properties are: contact, cohesion, rigidity, and performance. Contact refers to the contact of a child’s body, such as fingers, to the object. For example, a child reaches out and touches a red box with his/her fingers. This contact can either be a touch, a push, or any other such thing. Cohesion is when two objects unite. In some of the testing that has been done, it appears that two objects go through each other despite the physical impossibility of such an event. Rigidity has to do with a hard surface. When a child touches a box, the wooden surface of it won’t shift or move. It is stable and hard… rigid. Performance refers to the act of completing something. An example of this is when a child pushes a box off of a platform when he/she is encouraged to do so. Object segregation is another important aspect of how a child’s mind functions. When someone perceives a boundary between two or more objects, that is object segregation. As an example, say you have to walk between two large trees. There are two sets of trees. One set of trees is far apart, and the other is close together. Set 1 is so far apart that it is possible to pass through the space. Set 2 has a very narrow space, and so it is not possible to go through. Understanding that you can travel through one space but not the other – understanding that there is a boundary between two objects – is object segregation. Bellargeon states that as a child grows older, they start to understand the idea of object segregation. That means that the older a child is, the more they understand the boundaries between objects. ‘The present experiments indicate that, when watching an agent act on objects in a scene, 12.5-month old infants take into account what objects the agent can see, or has seen, when interpreting her actions.’ (Luo, 2006). In this particular case, Luo used what are called familiarization trials. While the infants watched, a particular object, in this case a block or a cylinder, an agent reached for it. The more the agent reached for the block, the more interested the infants were in the block. When the agent reached for the cylinder after the positions were switched, the infants showed clear surprise. With these results, there is no doubt that infants take other individual’s choices into account when dealing with objects. The violation of expectancy is another aspect of objects with it comes to children and their worldly perceptions. This means that a child will be surprised when something does not go as he/she expected. This violation of expectancy stays with the child all of their life. When you walk into a store and see that everything has been changed since you were in there yesterday, you are surprised. No one would expect the store to change in such a dramatic way aside from the people who changed it, and you are no different. This is the same for a child. If a child is given a sticker, and they have never seen one before, they will be surprised when it sticks to their skin. Perhaps the child has seen paper before, and a sticker would look much the same… only the paper didn’t stick! With the violation of expectancy, infants show more interest in something that surprises them than they do if it is ‘ordinary.’ As shown in results from one of Moore’s (2006) tests, “the data provide clear evidence that both the younger and older infants perceived the human point-light display a representing a solid form, with all infants showing recovery in attention when this form was violated as it passed through the table top.” When the light was not violated, infants treated the event like a mundane part of life. When the human form crossed through the space and violated the light, infants looked back at the spot where this happened repeatedly. While more testing in this area should be undertaken, it is clear that, according to this data, infants fully recognize when something is as it should be, and when it isn’t. Moore did several other tests of a similar variety. It is not know whether or not infants noticed the violation because of the human form, or because there was movement. Unfortunately more testing in this particular area, as stated above, is required. Say a ball is placed on the floor, and the child sees it. After a few minutes, the ball is taken away and hidden behind a box. When the child looks for the ball, this means that he/she is looking for something that can no longer be seen. That thought process is called object permanence; the child understands that something exists even if it cannot be seen or heard. An old saying goes, ‘when a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?’ The answer is, yes, it does make a sound, just like it would if you were present to witness it. Object permanence is something that develops within the child’s brain, although what triggers it, when, and why are only some of the questions that go with it. This theory was created by a man named Jean Piaget. As Cherry (2011) said, ‘In the sensorimotor stage of development, a period that lasts from birth to about age two, Piaget suggested that children understand the world through their motor abilities such as touch, vision, taste and movement.’ Piaget performed several tests to determine whether a child had developed object permanence. If a child cried or appeared upset when an object was taken away, the child did not yet possess object permanence. If a child looked for the hidden object, object permanence was present. According to Piaget, between the ages of 3 ? to 12 ? months, a child goes through three distinct stages of development. The first stage has to do with contact between two objects. They become aware that the box ill fall off of a platform when it is no longer in contact with the platform. Female children learned about this process sooner than males. The second stage of development brings to light the way the box is placed on the platform. In stage one, infants believed tat the box would stay on the platform no matter how it was placed. In stage two, the child could understand that if most of the box is off the platform, the box will fall. If the box is placed directly onto the platform, it will not fall. At this stage, when half the box is on the platform it is not expected to fall. In the third stage, at 6 ? months, the shape of the object on the platform becomes important to the child. Prior to this age, all shapes and sizes of objects are treated the same. An L-shaped object would be treated the same as a box or a triangle shaped object. Based on tests and other such things, it is clear that children understand basic concepts like gaps and gravity. How they inadvertently just know these things without being taught is one of the largest mysteries of all. If no one has taught a child that a box will fall if pushed off of a platform, then is it genetics, or something else? Numerous tests have been done in order to solve this mystery. Many tests, in fact, don’t focus on this at all, but they still raise questions. One of the tests that Baillargeon did is a good example. When the child pushed the box, he/she knew, without a doubt, that the box would fall off of the platform and hit the ground. The child didn’t expect to see the box float in the air, just like no one else would expect such a thing. Children mimicking facial imitations based on what adults do are another mystery in the process of learning about how they perceive the world around them. They have never been taught to mimic someone else, and yet they learn how to smile, frown, laugh, and many other things this way. While there are disagreements between the core theory and the Piagetian theory, ‘both maintain that young infants, without any special training on the task, should not be able to imitate facial gestures.’ (Meltzoff, 1983). Imitation is something that all animals, not just humans, rely on to ‘grow up’, however. Our closest biological cousins, the apes, learn this way. Sign language can be taught to a chimpanzee or a gorilla by the use of imitation. Other animals learn this way as well including horses and cats. According to results obtained by Meltzoff (1983), ‘results showed that newborn infants can imitate both adult displays.’ The two displays were: opening the mouth, and protruding the tongue. Intermodal matching is the most widely accepted reason for the infant’s behavior, but two other possibilities are associative learning and innate releasing mechanisms. Children see the world with incredibly different eyes than adults do. In looking at the number of different theories, this much is clear. How children perceive the world is still a very uncertain realm, one which is full of possibilities. Scientists are learning new things all the time, and there will continue to be surprises in the future. The more theories there are, and the more people who argue over what is right, the more information will be gained from it. Child development stages are just one of many subjects that are under scrutiny by numerous scientists. Both old theories and new ones are taken into account, but, like everything, it is difficult to truly see results without the proper experiments. How children learn, and what brain functions are running from birth, are still under debate. How quickly these functions develop is also a question that has yet to be answered. Because all children are different and grow at different rates, it is very difficult to base findings on just a few infants. For example, Child A and Child B are the same age. Child A is growing quickly, while Child B is a ‘late bloomer’, and is further behind in development. These variations make cognitive studies a challenge. 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