Children see, children do, but monkeys know better

I usually like to blog about recent articles, and I try to limit myself to papers published in the last 2-3 years. I’m going to make an exception this time and write about a publication from way back (2005). By scientific standards, 5 years ago is literally ancient (kind of like computer standards), but bear with me, this is going to be worth it (unlike a 5-year old computer).

Researchers from the UK were interested in finding out more about learning patterns, and about how our learning patterns differ from one of our close cousins, the chimpanzee. To test this, they subjected human children 2-4 years old and chimpanzees 2-6 years old to a simple task: retrieving a treat from a box.

In the first set of experiments, the researchers gave the chimps an opaque black box, and showed them how to open it to retrieve a treat inside. This wasn’t a simple pull-the-top-off kind of box, though. The box seemingly could only be opened following a series of specific steps: pulling a bolt, putting a stick in a hole, opening a door, etc. Chimps are quick-learners, though, and by imitating the researcher, they were soon able to retrieve the treat, no problem.

How well did the human children to at the same task? Quite well. They too were able to learn how to retrieve the treat from the black box by copying all the steps the researcher showed them. It would have been slightly worrying otherwise. I mean, we’ve taken over the world, right? Surely we can teach our young how to open a silly box, right?

The second set of experiments was almost exactly the same as the first one, except this time the box was made out of clear plastic instead of being opaque. The researchers went through the same process of teaching the chimps how to open the box. But there’s a catch: with a transparent box, it became very obvious that most of the steps supposedly needed to open the box were irrelevant. All you had to do was open the door. Chimpanzees, our closest living relative, are quite smart, and dropped all the unnecessary steps. They didn’t bother with the bolt and the stick and all those irrelevant actions: they went straight for the door and grabbed the treat.

When it was time for the children to be tested on the clear box, they too got shown how to open it by the researchers, including all the unnecessary steps. And when it was their turn to do it, they obviously…

Started pulling the bolt, putting the stick in the hole, etc.

Wait, what?

Did I get that wrong? I must have messed up the subjects… Wait… Nope. Those monkeys just fed us a piece of humble pie.

The researchers suggest that in the case of this study, the difference between how the chimps and how the children perform the task may have to do with a different focus of attention. Children pay more attention to the process of opening the box and the actions of the researcher, while chimps have their eyes on the prize, and focus more on the goal rather than the process. The researchers conclude by saying that imitation may be a human strategy that is often employed at the expense of efficiency.

The interesting thing about this article is that some news reports and descriptions of this experiment in magazines ended with a conclusion that more or less stipulated that our children imitated even the irrelevant steps of the task because that was the smarter thing to do, twisting the story around to make it sound like humans were superior to the chimpanzees in some way. Start your debate engines, but my opinion is that we should stop considering ourselves so superior. The results of this study are pretty straightforward. Do we really have to come up with a twisted interpretation of the results to make us sound like the winners? I would love it if we could just look at this experiment and say, hey, what do you know, we can learn something from the chimps.

Eyes on the prize, people. Eyes on the prize.

This monkey is laughing at you.

Reference: Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens). (2005) Horner V., Whiten A. Anim Cogn 8(3):164-81.

The trouble with the tube (part 2 of 2)

There is a wealth of literature on the negative impacts of television watching on developing children, and in my last post, I wrote about how certain types of television programs may lead to attentional problems later in life. I myself blame countless hours spent watching the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for my affinity for men who can dance. To balance the argument, can television be good for infants and children? Kids certainly claim they need the extra channels for “educational” purposes! There is overwhelming evidence that certain programs like Sesame Street have many educational benefits. It’s been shown that these programs increase school readiness, and improve vocabulary scores in children who start watching at 3 years old or older. Nowadays, though, videos and DVDs like the Baby Einstein products are being marketed for much younger children, as young as one month old in some instances. Even though the American Academy of Pediatrics favors zero exposure to television for very young children, children under two spend on average one to two hours a day in front of the tube. Who could blame them (or their parents) when media producers claim that their videos and DVDs have developmental benefits? Who wouldn’t want their child to become the next Einstein?

However exciting the claims may be, it remains unclear whether children under two can actually benefit from the information from a television screen. A 2007 study showed that children who watched more baby videos and DVDs knew fewer words than those who didn’t. In order to examine the relationship between infant DVDs and language, researchers from California studied the language skills of two groups of children 12 to 15 months old. The first group (called the control group) just went about their daily routines. The second group (the DVD group) was instructed to watch the DVD Baby Wordsworth (a DVD from the Baby Einstein company that highlights vocabulary words) at multiple time points for the duration of the study. Before and after the study, the children’s vocabulary was evaluated using a standard test.

Surprisingly, the results of the study show no significant differences between the control group and the DVD group on language skills at any time point (either before or after the study). I see this as good news, because while watching the DVD isn’t helping the children learn new words, it’s not keeping them from learning either. In addition to these results, the researchers were insightful enough to study other predictors (predictors are essentially other variables that may affect the outcome of the study). Interestingly (but not surprisingly), the amount of time a child was read to was the best predictor of a higher vocabulary score. And, since by now most of my readers realize the importance of controls, this relationship is true even when controlling for age, gender, income, parent education and development level.

Why doesn’t the DVD help the children learn new words? There are many potential explanations for this. Maybe the DVD is just not that educational. Maybe the DVD just doesn’t attract the infant’s attention. What’s even more likely is that young children just can’t process information from the television.

My dad used to read me a story every single night, and this went on well after I was able to read by myself. I still have, and will cherish forever, my favourite book of tales. I’m really grateful for all the hours my parents spent reading to me. Maybe it counteracted all the stupidity I was exposed to during my Fresh Prince phase.

Best book ever!

Reference: Just a talking book? Word learning from watching baby videos. Robb, M.B., Richert, R.A., Wartella, E.A. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 2009 27(1):27-45.

The trouble with the tube (part 1 of 2)

I don’t have a television. In my tiny apartment, there is no room for a television, and in my busy life, there really is no time for a television either. In addition, I just can’t stand commercials. Honestly, dancing monkeys won’t convince me to invest my money in a given institution.

It’s no surprise then that I’m usually pleased when I come across scientific evidence that television is bad for you, and I have yet to come across scientific evidence that television is actually good for anyone. I recently found a series of papers on the effects of television viewing in children. Since most households I know have a television in them, I think that makes it relevant science, so I’m dedicating a two-part blog post on those articles. In today’s article, researchers from Seattle, Washington study the relationship between what kind of television shows children watch and attentional problems later in life (attentional problems include but are not restricted to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder).

In the study, hundreds of parents (and other caregivers) of children 0 to 5 years old were questioned on how much television and what type of shows the children watched. Each household was followed up on 5 years later (so that the children were 5 to 10 years old) and asked about the behaviour of the children. For the purpose of the study, the children were separated into two groups: 0 to 3 years old, and 4-5 years old. Also for the purpose of the study, the types of television shows and movies were separated into 3 categories: educational (for example, Sesame Street), nonviolent entertainment (for example, The Aristocats) and violent content (for example, Power Rangers or Looney Tunes).

The good news is that the researchers found that for children aged 4 to 5 years, watching any kind of television was not significantly associated with attentional problems 5 years later. For the 0 to 3 years old, watching educational television also didn’t impact the children, but each hour per day of viewing violent entertainment television was associated with double the odds for attentional problems 5 years later. Watching nonviolent entertainment was also associated with subsequent attentional problems, but to a lesser degree than violent entertainment.

Now I don’t typically like these types of studies because I always can think of so many things that are not being taken into consideration (confounding factors in the scientific lingo). For example, is the effect the same for boys and for girls? What about if the family is rich or poor? The reason I like this particular study is because the researchers did control for many potential confounders like gender, urban or rural area of residence, socioeconomic adversity, number of children in the household, mother and father’s educational levels, mother’s mental health, presence of father in the household, parental conflict, etc. For example, by taking all these characteristics into account, the researchers could control for the fact that children who grow up in a rich and stimulating environment might be exposed to lower amounts of early television watching.

That being said, association studies are not perfect. They are reporting observations and not experimentations, and this means that the results do not necessarily report a cause-and-effect relationship. So in the end, we can’t say that watching violent shows always leads to attentional problems.

Regardless of its limitations, I find the study interesting and the results quite frightening (especially considering the study classifies “The Lion King” as violent content). The researchers mention two theories that could explain how watching television can impair healthy development. The first theory suggests that every moment in front of the television is a moment not spent on appropriate learning opportunities, like pretend play. The second theory is that fast pacing and quick scene changes typical of non-educational television shows trick the brain to think that real life is also a quick and constantly changing stimulus, and the brain comes to expect it. I find this second theory to be especially appropriate for the association with attentional problems. It also explains why educational television, which has been shown to be significantly slower-paced than other types of programming, is less damaging.

It was almost a no-brainer that Mister Roger’s neighbourhood equals good and Rambo equals bad. However, I wouldn’t have guessed that watching Wile E. Coyote blow himself up over and over again with Acme dynamite was anything more than a silly, harmless cartoon.

Good babysitter? Think again.

Reference: Associations between content types of early media exposure and subsequent attentional problems. Zimmerman, F.J., Christakis, D.A. Pediatrics 2007 120(5):987-992.