When I was a very little girl I was extremely fond of my Donald Duck comic books. In fact, I remember that my first motivation to learn to read came when my mother was too busy to read a new Donald Duck to me, and I was longing to know what the story was about. The whole panoply of Disney characters seemed wholesome and child-friendly to me and most other people. Most of us have assumed that whatever was connected with Disney could be counted on to be valuable to children and families.
But apparently a corporation is a corporation, and corporations exist for their own benefit, not to do good. And while we might have sentimental reasons for wanting to exclude Disney from that generalization, the history of “Baby Einstein” tells us that we can’t make such an exception.
The problems began with the claim that “Baby Einstein” was not just potential entertainment for the very young child, but actually encouraged good cognitive development. This claim is simply not plausible within the context of what we know about early learning and development.
There’s no question that babies are fascinated by the world and eager to learn about it-- but on the other hand, there’s also no question that babies learn by active involvement rather than by passive exposure. Both educational and clinical work (like that of the late, great Stanley Greenspan) has focused on the importance of following babies’ lead and supporting the kind of learning they want to do at any given time. Infants may be soothed temporarily by passive exposure to “Baby Einstein” or similar stimulation, but this kind of experience doesn’t provide the developmental help that comes from active engagement.
In addition, young babies are most intrigued by and attentive to complicated experiences that involve social interactions as well as physical stimulation. That means that their most effective learning experiences result from play and affectionate interactions with adults. When a mother or father holds a baby, looks at him or her, makes exaggerated faces, talks or sings in an infant-directed way, and moves the baby around, these interesting synchronized activities are almost certain to catch a baby’s attention. Once caught, that attention guides the baby to learn a whole series of important things: how are facial expressions connected to voice tones or to speech rhythms? What sounds occur most often when a parent is speaking? Are there sounds people make (like sneezes) that come out of the mouth but have nothing to do with talking? What do grown-ups do when the baby looks at them, and what when he or she looks away?
These are all basic lessons in communicating with other people, and they probably cannot be learned except through active engagement with others. Passive exposure to a video is not a way to accomplish this kind of learning. It’s essential that these skills be learned, because they are the foundation of language (and therefore of reading), of emotional attachment and other relationships, and even of the capacity for empathy.
It’s implausible that “Baby Einstein” could foster these basic achievements of early learning. In addition to the implausibility of this idea, no one has offered any empirical research evidence to show that the program encourages early cognitive development. This is so clear that the Disney corporation some months ago offered refunds to parents who had expected cognitive effects for their baby and found that “Baby Einstein” did not provide them.
But the story is not over, according to a news report in the New York Times on July 1, 2010. Disney is displeased with criticism of “Baby Einstein”, and has made its displeasure felt by Dr. Alvin Poussaint and by Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Poussaint, a well-known psychiatrist, and Linn have both stated concerns with advertising for “Baby Einstein”. Poussaint and Linn have rented offices from the Judge Baker Children’s Center, a Boston children’s mental health organization. But it now transpires that pressure on the Judge Baker center was passed on to Poussaint and Linn, who were asked not to mention “Baby Einstein”. The situation has ended with Poussaint and Linn leaving their Judge Baker offices--- Poussaint returning to an office at Harvard Medical School, which one would hope is able to resist intimidation efforts.
The First Amendment is usually considered to protect commercial speech to some extent. It also protects criticism of commercial speech and of other material. A lawsuit against Poussaint and Linn would be unsuccessful, although potentially disastrously costly for them. But corporations with deep pockets have ways of influencing people without entering the courtroom, as we have noted. What can organizations that foster understanding of early development do to help in this battle? That remains to be seen, but we had better start to give it some thought.
Jean Mercer
Friday, July 2, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Scale Errors: Mistakes With Cute Little Things
Humans of all ages find it fascinating to see objects that are in the wrong scale-- much bigger or smaller than the real thing usually is. We’re intrigued by those puzzles that show pictures of ordinary objects magnified. Our love for miniatures is shown in dollhouses (adults like them too!), model boats and planes, and above all, model railroad displays, complete with tiny trees, people, cows, and stop signs.
Although adults may be much taken with miniature replicas of ordinary objects, they don’t confuse the two with each other. Curiously, though, toddlers do sometimes make the mistake of acting as if a miniature object is the same as its full-size counterpart. These mistakes are called “scale errors”. Of course the actions we call “scale errors” don’t work; for instance, a toddler might try to sit down on a doll chair, or put a foot into the open door of a toy car as if trying to get in. Scale errors have been demonstrated in laboratory studies of young children (for example, De Loache et al., Science, 2004, Vol. 304, pp. 1027-1029), when children were allowed to play with full-size objects and then had the objects replaced with miniatures. A recent study (Rosengren et al., Child Development, 2010, Vol. 80, pp.1586-1591) interviewed parents about scale errors at home and found that almost all of thirty parents of young children reported that their child had shown this kind of behavior. The greatest number of the errors reported had to do with trying to fit the child’s body into or onto a miniature object like a chair, but it may be simply that those errors were more likely to be noticed by an adult than other errors where the child tried to fit another object into a miniature object. Also, it appears that the children were very persistent in some of the body errors, and in some cases became annoyed or frustrated at their failure to achieve the impossible.
It can be quite difficult to observe some scale errors, especially if the child gives up the effort quickly, or if it is hard to tell the difference between the scale error and pretend play. One of my children, as a toddler, got hold of the T-shaped end of a plastic hang-tag holder. He grasped it by the long leg and struck it against other objects, saying “ham[mer]”. Was this an actual scale error or pretend? It’s hard to say, because at this age he was not able to use a hammer properly and would have played with an actual hammer in the same way.
Are scale errors associated with other kinds of mistakes young children make? The developmentalist Jean Piaget described children’s lack of the ability to understand that objects contain the same amount of material no matter what we do to their shape. This ability, called “conservation”, allows older children and adults to know that a piece of Play-doh rolled out flat is the same amount of Play-doh as it is when squeezed into a ball, and that when a tall thin glass of water is poured into a short fat glass, the amount of water remains the same. Young children who have not achieved conservation complain loudly when they think a piece of birthday cake standing on end is different from an identical piece lying flat on the plate. Occasionally older children too will show a problem with conservation, as in the case of the 8-year-old who told his mother that if she couldn’t fit a container of yoghurt into his lunchbox, she should put it in a plastic bag like the sandwich-- “then it will fit!”.
Young children have trouble figuring out how to put two objects together even when the objects are of normal size. Their strategy seems to be to try first to bring into contact the two parts of the object which eventually will go together. This is why T-shirts go on backward (it seems) more than 50% of the time, as the child arranges the shirt so that the front is nearest to the front of the body before putting it on--- but of course this orientation puts the front of the shirt at the back of the body later. Similarly, watch a toddler trying to put an adult’s shoe on the adult’s foot. The child puts the toe of the shoe against the toe end of the foot instead of slipping the heel of the shoe past the toes until the foot is inside the shoe.
Piaget described young children as “cognitive aliens”, meaning that much of their thinking is so different from ours that they might as well come from another planet. Scale errors and backward T-shirts are some indications of these differences. These things are part of the reason that young children need to learn by playing instead of by instruction. We can’t think the way they do well enough to design lessons for them.
Jean Mercer
Although adults may be much taken with miniature replicas of ordinary objects, they don’t confuse the two with each other. Curiously, though, toddlers do sometimes make the mistake of acting as if a miniature object is the same as its full-size counterpart. These mistakes are called “scale errors”. Of course the actions we call “scale errors” don’t work; for instance, a toddler might try to sit down on a doll chair, or put a foot into the open door of a toy car as if trying to get in. Scale errors have been demonstrated in laboratory studies of young children (for example, De Loache et al., Science, 2004, Vol. 304, pp. 1027-1029), when children were allowed to play with full-size objects and then had the objects replaced with miniatures. A recent study (Rosengren et al., Child Development, 2010, Vol. 80, pp.1586-1591) interviewed parents about scale errors at home and found that almost all of thirty parents of young children reported that their child had shown this kind of behavior. The greatest number of the errors reported had to do with trying to fit the child’s body into or onto a miniature object like a chair, but it may be simply that those errors were more likely to be noticed by an adult than other errors where the child tried to fit another object into a miniature object. Also, it appears that the children were very persistent in some of the body errors, and in some cases became annoyed or frustrated at their failure to achieve the impossible.
It can be quite difficult to observe some scale errors, especially if the child gives up the effort quickly, or if it is hard to tell the difference between the scale error and pretend play. One of my children, as a toddler, got hold of the T-shaped end of a plastic hang-tag holder. He grasped it by the long leg and struck it against other objects, saying “ham[mer]”. Was this an actual scale error or pretend? It’s hard to say, because at this age he was not able to use a hammer properly and would have played with an actual hammer in the same way.
Are scale errors associated with other kinds of mistakes young children make? The developmentalist Jean Piaget described children’s lack of the ability to understand that objects contain the same amount of material no matter what we do to their shape. This ability, called “conservation”, allows older children and adults to know that a piece of Play-doh rolled out flat is the same amount of Play-doh as it is when squeezed into a ball, and that when a tall thin glass of water is poured into a short fat glass, the amount of water remains the same. Young children who have not achieved conservation complain loudly when they think a piece of birthday cake standing on end is different from an identical piece lying flat on the plate. Occasionally older children too will show a problem with conservation, as in the case of the 8-year-old who told his mother that if she couldn’t fit a container of yoghurt into his lunchbox, she should put it in a plastic bag like the sandwich-- “then it will fit!”.
Young children have trouble figuring out how to put two objects together even when the objects are of normal size. Their strategy seems to be to try first to bring into contact the two parts of the object which eventually will go together. This is why T-shirts go on backward (it seems) more than 50% of the time, as the child arranges the shirt so that the front is nearest to the front of the body before putting it on--- but of course this orientation puts the front of the shirt at the back of the body later. Similarly, watch a toddler trying to put an adult’s shoe on the adult’s foot. The child puts the toe of the shoe against the toe end of the foot instead of slipping the heel of the shoe past the toes until the foot is inside the shoe.
Piaget described young children as “cognitive aliens”, meaning that much of their thinking is so different from ours that they might as well come from another planet. Scale errors and backward T-shirts are some indications of these differences. These things are part of the reason that young children need to learn by playing instead of by instruction. We can’t think the way they do well enough to design lessons for them.
Jean Mercer
Introducing Infant Mental Health
This blog is sponsored by the New Jersey Association for Infant Mental Health (www.njaimh.org) and will publish posts by NJAIMH members and other contributors on topics related to optimum development of infants and their families.
The term "infant mental health" refers to good early development of cognitive, emotional, and physical abilities in children, and to the fostering of parenting skills and relationships that provide the foundation for individual development. Much of the emphasis in the study of infant mental health is on positive achievements and family strengths, and most posts here will focus on those, although we will sometimes refer to new work on autism and other serious developmental problems.
The term "infant mental health" refers to good early development of cognitive, emotional, and physical abilities in children, and to the fostering of parenting skills and relationships that provide the foundation for individual development. Much of the emphasis in the study of infant mental health is on positive achievements and family strengths, and most posts here will focus on those, although we will sometimes refer to new work on autism and other serious developmental problems.
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