Symbol-Brained

[Bekah]

At 2:45 PM +0000 8/12/05, Ghetta Life wrote:
>>From: Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
>>
>>Yeah, I really liked that one as well, and, of course, that notion 
>>of symbolic represntation is of more than a little interest when it 
>>comes to lit'rachure, st al.,
>
>I think the understanding of the origins of abstract thinking as 
>being able to think of an object as symbolic of something else is 
>centrally important.  And with GR so heavily reliant and jam-packed 
>with symbols, it is more than a little relevant.
>
>>but, still, in the end, those scientists were ultimately and 
>>repetedly setting up kids for a fall.
>
>I don't see it that way at all.  They were testing the children's 
>percetion limit.  Limits are not failings.


Seeing symbolically is a developmental thing.  The study did show 
that. It showed that what 2 year olds were not able to do,  3 year 
olds were.   There was some vital info missing in the report,  but 
basically I think that was the thrust.

I know that kids under the age of 3 can't understand that the letter 
on the page is a symbol for the sound of "Mm" for instance.   Or that 
the numeral 7 represents that quantity.    But at the age of 3 or 4 
they get that.

Piaget did a lot of work in this area.   At age of 7 there is a big 
break through in the idea of "conservation" (if nothing changes it 
stays the same.)  At age 11 there is a big change to abstractions 
(enabling the kids to work without manipulatives to understand 
fractions and decimals).   Kids younger than this can often do the 
job but they have no concept of the rationale.  They basically parrot 
and copy and plug in a formula.

So the answer to the above is yes,  the kids were set up to fail 
because they were not developmentally ready for what they were 
supposed to do,  but getting to precise ages is interesting (albeit 
probably flawed).  Anyway,  there was nothing particularly new in the 
study,  but it does validate prior understanding.  And teachers need 
all the understanding of learnign theory we can get!

Bekah