Re: Crossing the Street
Thomas and Nanci Kuykendall
>Parents generally assume children can't do the math, and make them waitActually I have read (sorry but I cannot recall the source) that children
>until an adult has done it.
>
>
>Linda
do not posess the cognitive abilities to acuratelty do these calculations
until something like age 10. It makes reasonable sense to me, and I don't
want to take a chance with my children, if every time they cross the street
there is the possibility that they will get squished due to inaccurate
calculations. Of course, there are no absolutes and I am sure that there
are some children that reach this level of cognitive ability earlier. Not
to mention the fact that the sciences of Psychology and other types of
brain study are still quite young.
Nanci K. in Idaho
[email protected]
In a message dated 6/13/99 9:25:27 AM, tn-k4of5@... writes:
<<Not to mention the fact that the sciences of Psychology and other types of
brain study are still quite young.>>
There is some pretty fascinating info in Frank Smith's book (The Book of
Learning and Forgetting) about the fact that many scientific studies of
learning are actually studies of how we learn nonsense! I think there may be
many faulty conclusions floating around in the >>sciences<< of Psychology and
of Education.
To back up and explain for those who haven't read this cool book:
In order to get a controlled result when studying the effectiveness of
learning methods, one needs to have people to test who have no prior
knowledge of that subject and no particular interest in the subject.
(Otherwise their prior knowledge or strong interest may skew the result.)
Therefore experiments were designed ,(by Ebbinghaus), to test how well people
could memorize nonsense words. That made for a more controlled experiment.
But the human brain seems to work best making connections between real
things. Studying how we learn nonsense doesn't lead to valid conclusions
about how we learn things that do make sense, and do connect to our prior
knowledge.
I wish I had time to write this better, but I'm late to go visit my mom.
Gotta fly!
Hope some of you have something to add on this topic. My husband has always
thought that a lot of official theory about Short Term Memory was hooey -- I
need to discuss this with him further.
Betsy
<<Not to mention the fact that the sciences of Psychology and other types of
brain study are still quite young.>>
There is some pretty fascinating info in Frank Smith's book (The Book of
Learning and Forgetting) about the fact that many scientific studies of
learning are actually studies of how we learn nonsense! I think there may be
many faulty conclusions floating around in the >>sciences<< of Psychology and
of Education.
To back up and explain for those who haven't read this cool book:
In order to get a controlled result when studying the effectiveness of
learning methods, one needs to have people to test who have no prior
knowledge of that subject and no particular interest in the subject.
(Otherwise their prior knowledge or strong interest may skew the result.)
Therefore experiments were designed ,(by Ebbinghaus), to test how well people
could memorize nonsense words. That made for a more controlled experiment.
But the human brain seems to work best making connections between real
things. Studying how we learn nonsense doesn't lead to valid conclusions
about how we learn things that do make sense, and do connect to our prior
knowledge.
I wish I had time to write this better, but I'm late to go visit my mom.
Gotta fly!
Hope some of you have something to add on this topic. My husband has always
thought that a lot of official theory about Short Term Memory was hooey -- I
need to discuss this with him further.
Betsy