Let children be ‘small lawyers’ – Reducing flaws can accelerate their social skills
A new study shows that when young children find flaws, or timid work-four, for instructions, they will have to apply advanced social and language skills
“I’m not alone, I have found my trusted sidekick!”
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Many parents will find this scenario familiar: Tomer UlmanA parent of Harvard University and a cognitive scientist asked his then five-year-old child to install a tablet. But rather than removing it completely – as Ulman really wanted – the child set the device on a table and continued to watch the video on it. Ulman Memory Being upset but surrounded by behavior.
At Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, he and his fellow scientists, some of whom shared similar parenting experiences, were motivated to investigate children Exploitation of language “flaws”—What children do technically what adults ask them, but completely violate the correct intentions of the request. Sometimes these common alternative interpretations are purposeful mischief; At other times, they are an honest misconception. But research shows that some young children use them as a real way to avoid orders without getting into trouble. New study, published child Development, This suggests that such clever rules can actually show that a child is starting to understand language and others better.
Cognitive scientist and co-leid study writer Sophie bridges Was Earlier analyzed How children decide to help others, a major element for social interaction. But cooperation is not always black and white, especially when children and adults have conflicting goals. “There are actually this entire gray fields,” Bisars’, “Says Brijers, who were a postdoral researcher in MIT when a new study was done and is now a researcher in Google Deepmind. “Sometimes you never want to cooperate, but it may seem risky to refuse a lump sum. We began to be eager to handle this stress used to handle the strategies (children).” Listening to renewers from Ulman, who is a senior writer of new studies, and other parents motivated the bridges to examine whether the silence could be such a strategy.
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The bridges and their colleagues surveyed 260 US-based parents, to understand how much widespread flaws their children had. Many parents shared rich examples of flaws -for example, a child who was asked to hold his hand while crossing the road, grabbed his hand instead of his parents and a child said that the dog did not take the dog with him instead of waiting for an adult to not go out alone. The universality that appears to be the flaws mentioned by the parents indicates that behavior can be normalized to a extent of real-world conditions. Survey of the parents led a series of follow-up studies, the first of which evaluated a separate set of 108 children between the ages of four to nine, to find out if they consider the flaws to be an obedient or non-practical behavior, or a middle ground between the two. Researchers read a story to the children and judged how much trouble the child is in the scenario if they use a flaws. An additional follow -up study examined another group of 140 children, which was five to nine years to determine the ability to create a flaws for a scenario between the age of five to nine.
Multinelis reports have shown that four-year-old children were unable to separate the deficiencies from non-conamples-the participants thought that the child in the story would be in the same kind of trouble, whether they use a flaws or completely disregard the requests of the parents. But participants, between the age of five to eight, appeared to see the flaws almost as a way to land on a technology; They understood what the parents were asking and how the child used a flaws to take advantage of lack of specificity in the command. This age group saw flaws as a way of getting into “less trouble” than non -non -non -non -non -non -non -compliance. Age limits are still there when parents see their children slowly using more flaws, Bisars say.
“There are social criteria and rules that children are learning around eating, playing, their household chores, homework, sleeping,” Brijers say. “They are testing all these boundaries.”
Researchers found that children may firmly come with flaws quickly at the age of eight at the age of eight, increasing their skills at the age of five and seven years. Ability to understand the intended meaning and alternative Many meanings from a phrase Language is skills that are strong in children between the ages of five to seven years, say Brijers. These skills not only allow children to use flaws, but also consider them more complex figures of speech like ironyFigure and Sarcasm,
being able to Estimate the vested meaning Reference to Indirect requestAlso using metaphors and punishments, the development of language requires a “high order”, says Laura WagnerA professor of developmental psychology at Ohio State University, who was not involved in the study. According to Wagner, “This is the first time I have seen someone that children are actually seen actually exploiting flaws and showing that they not only understand that there is a double meaning (what their parents are saying) but what its social implications are,” she says.
Wagner feels that the cognitive skills required to find the flaws are the same, which is also the same, which is one. Advanced language skillsShe says, “Children under three or four years of age are notorious badly false because they are really bad about finding out what other people really know,” she says.
Children get better in lying around the same age that they get better in coming with flaws. Bridges suggest that this may occur because other cognitive skills develop in childhood in parallel. It involves the emergence of the principle of mind, the point at which children actually begin to understand the idea that other people have their own set of beliefs and reality representation. Additionally, children begin to use their estimates of the beliefs, goals and approaches of others to calculate the cost and benefits of their functions.
“Planning action that not only takes the goal of (a child), but also relates to the potentially low behavior keeping in mind the goals of other people,” Briisers say.
Parents cannot appreciate a child who is good in lying or is constantly ignoring orders. But it shows that “they are integrating a lot of language knowledge (and) social knowledge,” Wagner says. Also, these activities are the functions of creative problems.
“These are all behaviors that are in our social equipment kits,” Bridies say. “Lying is a way around conflicting goals; partial compliance is another way.”
It is not always such a bad thing for children to act like “small lawyers”, as the team of bridges refers to children who appoint such behaviors. After all, these children are learning to navigate naturally vague social interactions – and have fun with it.
People have many ways to communicate beliefs and goals: through language, functions, micro sub -texts and innumerable signs and numerous of social norms. “This is a noisy system where information can lose,” bridges. Recognizing how Lupols work “You can think differently about the way you communicate and interact with others.”
