Why Toddlers Don't Do What They're Told

Hugh Pickens writes "New cognitive research shows that 3-year-olds neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present, but instead call up the past as they need it. 'There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they're just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different,' says professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Munakata's team used a computer game and a setup that measures the diameter of the pupil of the eye to determine mental effort to study the cognitive abilities of 3-and-a-half-year-olds and 8-year-olds. The research concluded that while everything you tell toddlers seems to go in one ear and out the other, the study found that toddlers listen, but then store the information for later use. 'For example, let's say it's cold outside and you tell your 3-year-old to go get his jacket out of his bedroom and get ready to go outside,' says doctoral student Christopher Chatham. 'You might expect the child to plan for the future, think "OK it's cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm." But what we suggest is that this isn't what goes on in a 3-year-old's brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it.'"

Comments

Wow, I'm glad Science has cought up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Us Marketers knew this shit a LONG time ago.

Maybe you should listen to us a little more you tech assholes.

Thank you Einstein

[Hao Wu]

Maybe if doctors would have more kids instead of studying them in laboratories, then they would "discover" these insights immediately.

It's like young engineers who tediously write out what working mechanics already know. Academics can solve problems on paper. Put them in the real world, and they flunk out of life.

Re:Thank you Einstein

[Hao Wu]

This discovery has very applicable uses, particularly in the general processes of the cognitive processes of toddlers, brain development, and memory storage and retrieval.

And people care! When kids need attention, parents can't wait to whip out a research paper written by someone with no kids who has processed cash-desperate volunteers in a "methodological and precise" manner.

You're pretty stupid!

Re:Thank you Einstein

[Runaway1956]

Hao Wu is stupid? I don't think so. Engineers are scientists, of a sort. I've had engineers hand me blueprints, and in ten minutes I found problems that SHOULD have been obvious to a kid in junior high school. (Try this: dig a trench in soil, which is 48 inches wide at the bottom, and 36 inches wide at the top, and two feet deep, then put men to work in the trench. See how long the top remains 36 inches) There are any number of educated idiots in this world who should have been drowned when they were still pups. Anecdote and casual observation accumulated over time equate to empirical evidence. Any "scientist" who dismisses empirical evidence is no scientist at all. The moment his experiments run contrary to empirical evidence, he had BETTER reexamine everything he has done beginning with the concepts and assumptions behind the experiment. What is stupid is, assuming that another man is stupid because you can't comprehend his statements.

summary of /. replies

[Anonymous Coward]

hurr hurr I already knew this gosh scientists are so dumb why do they waste my hard earned (by reading slashdot) tax dollars

if scientists are so dumb then why are you fucks wasting your lives wiping viruses off of the computers of people who earn more money than you rather than racking up nobel prizes yourself

fucking retards

Fp trol7kore

[Anonymous Coward]

guys are usuallRy for successful

Re:The explanation:

[master5o1]

I suppose you've never seen any evidence of a woman's pupils and/or vagina dilating then.