November 19, 2015 at 09:49In infants, logical thinking appears even before one year
In the 1960s, psychologists were convinced that children were capable of logical reasoning at the age of seven. In the 1970s, that four-year-old children can draw transitive conclusions if their task complexity is reduced. A new study showed that ten-month-old infants are able to understand the social hierarchy of submission.
Screenshot from the experiment video: the puppet show is shown to the child
In the 1960s, a Swiss psychologist and philosopher Jean Piaget, known for his work on the study of child psychology, conducted an experiment involving children aged seven and eight. If Vanya is higher than Masha, and Masha is higher than Kolya, then Vanya is higher than Kolya: a child at this age is able to draw this conclusion, even if he does not see all the people from this task at the same time. Jean Piaget singled out the age of 7–11 years as a “period of concrete operations” in which children develop logical reasoning when they think about real things, and the ability to draw transitive conclusions and understand the hierarchy of relationships.
In the late 1970s, researchers found that children were able to make transitive conclusions at the age of four, if the complexity of the problem being solved was reduced.
This time the team of scientists at Emory University was able to prove that children at the age of ten months are already able to solve logical problems: babies understand the social hierarchy of dominance. Stella Lourenco teamed up with psychologist Robert Hampton, who works in the laboratory of the Yerkes National Center for the Study of Primates and as part of his research, demonstrated that monkeys can make transitive conclusions, and with Regina Paxton Gazes, a former graduate student in the laboratory Hampton and a researcher at the Atlanta Zoo.
Gayses developed non-verbal experiments for babies. At first, the children were shown a video with three dolls - an elephant, a bear and a hippo of the same size, arranged in the framework of the social hierarchy from left to right. The elephant holds the toy, then the bear forcibly takes the toy from the elephant, and the hippo takes it from the bear. The scenario assumes that the bear dominates the elephant and the hippo dominates the bear. In the finale, the children were shown a sketch where an elephant takes a toy from a hippo, and this scenario was much more interesting for babies than everyone else.
“The dominance of the elephant violates the relationship understood by the child, because before that the bear took the toy from him, and the hippo took it from the bear. Children paid more attention to this scenario because it violates the transitive conclusions, and babies are trying to understand why the situation is not what they predicted, ”explains Lawrence.
For the second experiment, the researchers added a fourth hero who has not yet interacted with the characters: a giraffe. This scenario did not interest children.
Thirty-two infants from ten to thirteen months took part in the experiment. Twenty-three of them reacted more vividly to scenarios in which the unexpected behavior of the heroes was traced than to all other scenes. Scientists suggest that the transitive conclusions for the social hierarchy are important for evolution, so a person is able to draw them at such an early age. The findings of scientists from this experiment can be a tool for assessing the development of the child.
Screenshot from the experiment video: the puppet show is shown to the child
In the 1960s, a Swiss psychologist and philosopher Jean Piaget, known for his work on the study of child psychology, conducted an experiment involving children aged seven and eight. If Vanya is higher than Masha, and Masha is higher than Kolya, then Vanya is higher than Kolya: a child at this age is able to draw this conclusion, even if he does not see all the people from this task at the same time. Jean Piaget singled out the age of 7–11 years as a “period of concrete operations” in which children develop logical reasoning when they think about real things, and the ability to draw transitive conclusions and understand the hierarchy of relationships.
In the late 1970s, researchers found that children were able to make transitive conclusions at the age of four, if the complexity of the problem being solved was reduced.
This time the team of scientists at Emory University was able to prove that children at the age of ten months are already able to solve logical problems: babies understand the social hierarchy of dominance. Stella Lourenco teamed up with psychologist Robert Hampton, who works in the laboratory of the Yerkes National Center for the Study of Primates and as part of his research, demonstrated that monkeys can make transitive conclusions, and with Regina Paxton Gazes, a former graduate student in the laboratory Hampton and a researcher at the Atlanta Zoo.
Gayses developed non-verbal experiments for babies. At first, the children were shown a video with three dolls - an elephant, a bear and a hippo of the same size, arranged in the framework of the social hierarchy from left to right. The elephant holds the toy, then the bear forcibly takes the toy from the elephant, and the hippo takes it from the bear. The scenario assumes that the bear dominates the elephant and the hippo dominates the bear. In the finale, the children were shown a sketch where an elephant takes a toy from a hippo, and this scenario was much more interesting for babies than everyone else.
“The dominance of the elephant violates the relationship understood by the child, because before that the bear took the toy from him, and the hippo took it from the bear. Children paid more attention to this scenario because it violates the transitive conclusions, and babies are trying to understand why the situation is not what they predicted, ”explains Lawrence.
For the second experiment, the researchers added a fourth hero who has not yet interacted with the characters: a giraffe. This scenario did not interest children.
Thirty-two infants from ten to thirteen months took part in the experiment. Twenty-three of them reacted more vividly to scenarios in which the unexpected behavior of the heroes was traced than to all other scenes. Scientists suggest that the transitive conclusions for the social hierarchy are important for evolution, so a person is able to draw them at such an early age. The findings of scientists from this experiment can be a tool for assessing the development of the child.