[lit-ideas] Re: The Order of Aurality [children and color words]
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:55:29 -0700 (PDT)
That was an unfortunate juxtaposition of sentences on my part. Writing maketh
the exact man. Let's try it again, this time with a paragraph break.
I think abstract reasoning kicks in about at about age seven or so.
[Paragraph separation]
>>>
>>>Does a child that young [referring to the 2-year old children John was
>>>talking about, way younger than 7] even know colors?
I thought that was obvious and didn't understand why Julie deleted the
context. In addition, I doubt that John was talking about blue cookies and red
cookies but using them as, how shall we say, objective correlatives. Likewise
there is a distinction between intuitive knowing and naming.
Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia on Piaget and the work he did on reasoning in
children:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget's_theory_of_cognitive_development:
* The Symbolic Function Substage
Occurs between about the ages of 2 and 7. At 2-4 years of age, kids cannot yet
manipulate and transform information in logical ways, but they now can think in
images and symbols. The child is able to formulate designs of objects that are
not present. Other examples of mental abilities are language and pretend play.
Although there is an advance in progress, there are still limitations such as
egocentrism and animism. Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to
distinguish between their own perspective and that of another person's.
Children tend to pick their own view of what they see rather than the actual
view shown to others. An example is an experiment performed by Piaget and
Barbel Inhelder. Three views of a mountain are shown and the child is asked
what a traveling doll would see at the various angles; the child picks their
own view compared to the actual view of the doll. Animism is the belief that
inanimate objects are capable of actions and have
lifelike qualities. An example is a child believing that the sidewalk was mad
and made them fall down.[6]
* The Intuitive Thought Substage
Occurs between about the ages of 4 and 7. Children tend to become very curious
and ask many questions; begin the use of primitive reasoning. There is an
emergence in the interest of reasoning and wanting to know why things are the
way they are. Piaget called it the intuitive substage because children realize
they have a vast amount of knowledge but they are unaware of how they know
it.'Centration' and 'conservation' are both involved in preoperative thought.
Centration is the act of focusing all attention on one characteristic compared
to the others. Centration is noticed in conservation; the awareness that
altering a substance's appearance does not change its basic properties.
Children at this stage are unaware of conservation.Example, In Piaget's most
famous task, a child is presented with two identical beakers containing the
same amount of liquid. The child usually notes that the beakers have the same
amount of liquid.When one of the beakers is poured
into a taller and thinner container, children who are younger than 7 or 8
years old typically say that the two beakers no longer contain the same amount
of liquid, and the taller container holds the larger quantity. The child simply
focuses on the height and width of the container compared to the general
concept.[6]
If children were capable of gradations of color, McDonald's would use them.
Instead, they use primary colors.
Children are way overrated (and underrated) for what they can understand. CPS
workers, who are obviously people trained in developmental stages and family
dynamics, will never interview a child without first asking him/her what's a
truth, what's a lie. That's why I used the real life example of my 2-year old
niece saying please don't die mommy when my sister-in-law said "I'm dying, it's
so hot in here." The 2-year old took it literally. I once had a friend who
thought his kid was brilliant because at dinner the kid (also about 2), while
the mother was serving, said "hurry". Clearly, to his credit my friend
understood that "hurry" is an abstract idea for a child. However, children are
great parrots. They speak much better than they understand. It's very
possible, and probably likely, the child was simply using a word he had heard
before without necessarily understanding the ramifications of it. Or he was
just brilliant, that's
certainly a possibility. Another example of not necessarily abstract
reasoning but of cryptic motivation, is after the Scotland shootings at the
school, the children reenacted the shooting. Bizarre, until it was realized
that that's how the children were processing the tragedy. An onlooker might
say gee, they thought it was a source of entertainment. No. They were simply
working it through psychologically in their own way. Veering a bit off the
subject here, but years ago I made the argument that the Godzilla movies were
efforts to process the nuclear attacks by the Japanese people. The
Japanese made one Godzilla movie after another until they no longer needed to.
That's what annoys me about movies like "Home Alone" and the commercials with
the talking babies. They spread false ideas about what children can and cannot
understand, leading to even worse caretaking ultimately. Again a bit off the
subject, but maybe it's the incongruity of the powerless having power that's
the source of the humor? Humor as a way of feeling superior? Funny or not,
ultimately they do not further understanding of how children think or don't
think.
I hope I made myself clearer this time. Still working on that abstract
reasoning myself...
Andy
________________________________
From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 10:56 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Order of Aurality [children and color words]
I think abstract reasoning kicks in about at about age seven or so. Does a
child that young even know colors?
Andy: I don't know why you picked these ages; that is, what sources you used.
Most children know some things about colors, e.g. the typical colors of
familiar objects, between 2 and 3, although they often
make mistakes about some colors 'in the abstract,' (where the color is not the
color of a familiar thing—the sky, grass, the family dog).
But there's no such thing as 'knowing colors' tout court. There's a fairly
complex route from knowing the colors of a child's wooden
blocks to seeing the colors, gradations of colors, and colors for which we have
no ready-made names, in Jackson Pollock's 'Lavender
Mist,' in the National Gallery:
http://www.nga.gov/feature/pollock/painting1.shtm
'Abstract reasoning.' begins much earlier than 'about seven or so.'
At least two or three years earlier, in many cases—here, I speak from
experience, pace Hume.
Julie is right to wonder about your original claims.
Robert Paul
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