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PROFESSOR: Last time I was
talking about cognition and

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I'm framing the argument in part
in saying that we're not

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like computers, even though
computer's a nice metaphor for

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various secure aspects of
cognitive function.

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We could continue that today.

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When you get an off-the-shelf
computer, you expect that its

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basic way of thinking
is going to be --

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it's there.

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You might have to put some
programs on it to teach it to

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do specific things, but you
don't have to educate its

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motherboard or something
of that sort.

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With kids it's not clear
that that's the case.

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That if you take an
off-the-shelf baby, it's not

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clear that that baby is thinking
the way that an adult

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is thinking.

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That's really what I want
to talk about today.

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Let me put up a picture
that I can then

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return to multiple times.

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If this is age, and we're
interested in development,

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what we were talking about last
time is the adult state

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-- something about
the adult state.

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What we want to know in studying
cognitive development

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or any sort of development is
what's the starting point?

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If you have a newborn baby, is
that starting at zero or does

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that baby come with some sort of
innate endowment that gets

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them on the way towards
the adults state.

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Then what does the transition
from the kid state to the

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adult state look like?

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Does it look like some sort
of gradual improvement?

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Does it look like some sort
of step function?

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It might be useful to describe
from the realm of vision, a

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couple of examples just to
show you what this means.

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If you want to know what a
baby sees, get yourself a

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newborn off-the-shelf baby
and give them --

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well, you can't give them an eye
chart to read because they

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can't read, so you give them
the illiterate E chart, as

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it's called in the trade, and
you ask them which way do the

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letters point, the kid doesn't
tell you anything useful,

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because the kid can't answer
that question.

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However, conveniently enough
if you take even a newborn

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baby, young as you can test
them, and put them in front of

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a couple of screens --
little peephole here.

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You guys can all be babies and
the experiment, if you're

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looking out at you through
this peephole, if you put

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black and white bars on one
screen and you put on the

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other screen a grey of the same
average luminance, so if

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this is zero and that's 100,
this is 50 all over the place.

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If the baby can see the bars,
conveniently enough that baby

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will look at the bars.

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If you are looking at the baby,
you can figure out, you

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move the bars from
side-to-side from

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child-to-child, you can figure
out where that baby is looking

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and you can figure out where
the bars are based on where

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the baby is looking.

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That's known as a preferential
looking method, very useful in

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infant research.

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What you discover, if you do
experiments like this studying

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infant visual aquity, is that
babies don't start at zero.

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A newborn baby isn't blind.

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Newborn baby can
see something.

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If normal adult vision's around
20/20, newborn baby

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vision is around 20/400 --

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the big E at the top of
the eye chart roughly.

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The progression from the infant
state to the adult

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state is a gradual, relatively
steady increase over about the

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first couple of years of life.

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Every month you get roughly the
same kind of improvement

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until you hit the adult level.

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So, not a zero starting point
and a gradual improvement to

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adult level.

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Now let's take a different
example from the same realm.

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Remember you've got two eyes,
the differences in those two

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eyes are a depth cue -- known
as binocular stereopsis.

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Well the cue is binocular
disparity, the ability is

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stereoscopic depth perception.

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If you test a baby, so baby's it
turns out also like things

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that stand out in depth better
than they like flat stuff, so

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if you show a baby bars standing
out in depth, a

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newborn baby gives you squat.

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To all appearances there is no
binocular stereovision in a

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newborn baby.

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For about the first three to
five months, nothing happens.

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Then over a very short period of
time, performance rises to

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essentially the adult level,
as if this was waiting for

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something to get wired
up in the brain.

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When it got wired up in the
brain, bingo, the kid is fine.

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Oh, by the way, if you
are a woman person

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you got there first.

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It turns out to be a reliable
sex difference that females

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get binocular stereovision a
month or so before males.

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Does this make any difference
to anything?

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No, but we found it years and
years ago when I was a grad

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student so I still
remember it.

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So these are two of the various
possibilities for a

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function like this for a
developmental course.

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We're going to talk about
three specific realms of

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cognitive development in
which there are classic

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demonstrations of children doing
things differently than

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adults do them.

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I will try to take each of those
apart and to give you

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some idea of what's the starting
point, what's the

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ending point and how do
we get between those.

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The three, which are outlined on
the handout have to do with

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so-called childhood, animism
and egocentric behavior.

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Let me describe each of these
problems to you in turn and

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then we'll take each
of them apart.

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These are all demonstrations
that originally come from the

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work of Jean Piaget, the great
early mid-20th century

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developmental psychologist,
who among other things,

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bequeathed to us a great
collection of phenomena that

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shows striking differences
between the way kids behaving

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and the way adults behave and
that cry out for explanation.

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So here would be one of them.

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These are M&M's, let us say.

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This is another one of those
forced choice kind of things,

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so think hard about this.

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Are there more M&M's
here or here?

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How many vote up?

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That's good.

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However, if you were 3, 4, 5,
maybe even 6, you'd say here.

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You would be perfectly happy.

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So the first obvious thought
is well, the kid's just not

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quite understanding
the question.

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It a languagy kind of thing.

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We're saying where's
more and they're

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saying which is longer.

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So that's why it's important
that you use M&M's.

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You say OK, kid, which
pile would you like?

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Kid says I want this pile.

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Why do you want this pile?

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Well there's more there.

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In fact, this is why you
shouldn't be born to a

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psychologist because your
psychologist dad is always

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tricking you out of the candy
by playing this game on you.

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It works.

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You teach this stuff long enough
and you say is this

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really true?

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And then you've got yourself
like a three-year old kid and

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you mess with his brain --

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yeah, it's true.

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This is good stuff.

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The question here, of course,
is then what's going on?

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This is part of a
general problem.

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So let's take a fat beaker.

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Here's a big fat beaker with
this much fluid in it.

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Now I pour that into
a narrow beaker.

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The fluid level is?

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AUDIENCE: Higher.

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PROFESSOR: Higher.

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Is there more fluid now than
there was when it was here?

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No.

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Does a little kid
think there is?

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Yes.

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If you let the little kid pour
it back into the big bowl, now

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he thinks there's less now.

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Take a ball of clay, roll it out
into a snake, there's more

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clay says the little kid.

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Squish it back together,
now there's less.

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These are so-called conservation
problems.

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We're particularly interested in
the version that has to do

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with number -- how come they
think, in this case, that five

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is bigger than six.

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Second problem is what's called
childhood animism.

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The classic Piagethian version
would involve something

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exactly like his so-called three
mountain apparatus where

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e had sort of a table top --
he's from Switzerland, so he's

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into the Alps.

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It's a table top version of
the Alps, on the Alps are

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things like, that's a river
and that's a hut.

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The point is that you're
sitting here

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looking at this thing.

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You're like a three-year old or
something looking at this,

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and mom's over there
on the other side.

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You can see mom.

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The question that you're
asked is can your

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mother see the river?

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And you say, yeah sure.

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As if the fact that you could
see the river makes you think

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that she can see the river.

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As if you couldn't take
her point of view.

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At least Piaget thought that the
problem here is that you

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can't quite take somebody
else's point of view.

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My favorite anecdotal version of
this is a story of a little

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kid out to eat with his brother
at some burger place.

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Little kid wants more French
fries, and so he does this, on

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the theory, presumably, if I
can't see what I'm doing, you

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can't see what I'm doing.

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Most people don't do that by the
time they reach adulthood.

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So there's something
to explain there.

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That's not childhood
animism at all.

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Actually, that's egocentric
behavior.

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00:13:06,640 --> 00:13:08,490
Sorry, I misspoke.

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That's the third example
that we'll get to.

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So, egocentric makes
more sense.

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Ecocentric is the inability to
see things from somebody

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else's vantage point.

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So I've just described to you
the problem of childhood

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egocentrism.

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Childhood animism is a tendency
to declare things to

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be alive that you would not
declare to be alive.

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Is the cat alive?

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00:13:33,240 --> 00:13:34,170
Yeah, fine.

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00:13:34,170 --> 00:13:35,090
Is the sun alive?

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00:13:35,090 --> 00:13:35,390
Yes.

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00:13:35,390 --> 00:13:37,000
Are the clouds alive?

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00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:37,300
Yes.

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Little kids will assert that
and you typically will not.

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00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:43,920
That's animism.

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00:13:43,920 --> 00:13:49,110
Piaget understood that as a
problem with mapping concepts

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00:13:49,110 --> 00:13:53,020
onto a discrete set of entities
out in the world, and

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00:13:53,020 --> 00:13:56,810
so we'll take a look
at that, too.

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00:13:56,810 --> 00:14:01,160
So, number, animism, you
egocentric behavior, those are

217
00:14:01,160 --> 00:14:03,370
the things that I want
to talk about today.

218
00:14:03,370 --> 00:14:14,150
Let's start with number, and
let's start by taking apart

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00:14:14,150 --> 00:14:15,940
the idea of number a bit.

220
00:14:15,940 --> 00:14:25,886
Because you an I tend to think
of number as there's five of

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00:14:25,886 --> 00:14:28,490
those things and six
of those things.

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00:14:28,490 --> 00:14:31,670
The concept of number, the idea
of number can be broken

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00:14:31,670 --> 00:14:36,680
down into three different
bits at least.

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00:14:36,680 --> 00:14:39,680
Let's see if I can
do this right.

225
00:14:39,680 --> 00:14:40,740
Oh, well they went by.

226
00:14:40,740 --> 00:14:41,780
How many warthogs were there?

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00:14:41,780 --> 00:14:44,310
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

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00:14:44,310 --> 00:14:46,860
PROFESSOR: Let's
try this again.

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00:14:46,860 --> 00:14:49,980
AUDIENCE: 7.

230
00:14:49,980 --> 00:14:51,500
8.

231
00:14:51,500 --> 00:14:55,230
PROFESSOR: 9, 8, 7.

232
00:14:55,230 --> 00:14:56,450
Some number like that.

233
00:14:56,450 --> 00:14:57,710
It wasn't 150.

234
00:14:57,710 --> 00:14:59,470
But how about this?

235
00:14:59,470 --> 00:15:00,550
AUDIENCE: 2.

236
00:15:00,550 --> 00:15:02,620
PROFESSOR: OK, that's good.

237
00:15:02,620 --> 00:15:03,850
How about this?

238
00:15:03,850 --> 00:15:05,690
AUDIENCE: 3.

239
00:15:05,690 --> 00:15:09,120
PROFESSOR: How about this?

240
00:15:09,120 --> 00:15:11,060
This is data.

241
00:15:11,060 --> 00:15:18,290
If you do this task, what you
find is that people are

242
00:15:18,290 --> 00:15:21,970
essentially perfect for 1,
2 and 3, maybe 4, and

243
00:15:21,970 --> 00:15:23,390
then it falls off.

244
00:15:23,390 --> 00:15:26,250
I think the answer was 8 before,
but sometimes you say

245
00:15:26,250 --> 00:15:29,450
7, sometimes you say 9, and so
your percent correct, being

246
00:15:29,450 --> 00:15:33,240
absolutely correct will
systematically fall off.

247
00:15:33,240 --> 00:15:36,300
If I put 1,500 wart hogs up
there you'll just not get it

248
00:15:36,300 --> 00:15:38,160
right at all.

249
00:15:38,160 --> 00:15:41,030
Similarly, if I was to measure
not percent correct but

250
00:15:41,030 --> 00:15:45,180
reaction time, the reaction time
for 1, 2, 3, 4 would be

251
00:15:45,180 --> 00:15:49,410
essentially flat, and
then start to

252
00:15:49,410 --> 00:15:51,510
roughly linearly increase.

253
00:15:51,510 --> 00:15:55,250
That linear increase could be,
for a number like 8, could

254
00:15:55,250 --> 00:15:57,740
either be due to some sort
of counting operation.

255
00:16:01,510 --> 00:16:03,430
Somebody who thinks they saw
8 of them, tell me how they

256
00:16:03,430 --> 00:16:05,170
figured that out?

257
00:16:05,170 --> 00:16:05,450
Yeah?

258
00:16:05,450 --> 00:16:08,780
AUDIENCE: You saw a line
of 5 and then 2 and 1.

259
00:16:08,780 --> 00:16:11,170
PROFESSOR: A line of
5 and 2 and 1.

260
00:16:11,170 --> 00:16:13,190
OK.

261
00:16:13,190 --> 00:16:13,480
Yeah?

262
00:16:13,480 --> 00:16:15,850
AUDIENCE: I couldn't get a count
because they went away.

263
00:16:15,850 --> 00:16:16,420
PROFESSOR: OK, yes.

264
00:16:16,420 --> 00:16:18,690
If I was doing this as a proper
experiment I would have

265
00:16:18,690 --> 00:16:21,075
masked it so you couldn't count
like the after-image or

266
00:16:21,075 --> 00:16:24,100
the iconic memory.

267
00:16:24,100 --> 00:16:24,550
Yup?

268
00:16:24,550 --> 00:16:27,860
AUDIENCE: Just recall
the picture.

269
00:16:27,860 --> 00:16:30,020
PROFESSOR: OK, so you were also
dumping it out of iconic

270
00:16:30,020 --> 00:16:31,510
memory in some fashion.

271
00:16:31,510 --> 00:16:33,270
The answer I was fishing
for is something like

272
00:16:33,270 --> 00:16:34,980
the 5, 2 and 1 thing.

273
00:16:34,980 --> 00:16:37,460
That you can count those
displays, and in fact, the

274
00:16:37,460 --> 00:16:39,860
people who got them back later
might have done this, too --

275
00:16:39,860 --> 00:16:43,620
by more typically saying oh,
there's one group of 4,

276
00:16:43,620 --> 00:16:45,730
there's another group of 4.

277
00:16:45,730 --> 00:16:49,830
This ability to handle small
numbers is called subitizing,

278
00:16:49,830 --> 00:16:53,580
and it works for small numbers
like 1, 2, 3, 4.

279
00:16:53,580 --> 00:16:57,420
You have some immediate
appreciation of those small

280
00:16:57,420 --> 00:17:01,980
numbers that's different
than your appreciation

281
00:17:01,980 --> 00:17:06,280
of 8 or 17 or 150.

282
00:17:06,280 --> 00:17:11,420
That's one wart hog
demonstration.

283
00:17:11,420 --> 00:17:14,900
How about which one has
more wart hogs?

284
00:17:17,970 --> 00:17:21,090
How many vote that there
were more here?

285
00:17:21,090 --> 00:17:22,920
How many vote that there
were more here?

286
00:17:22,920 --> 00:17:24,930
OK, you got that.

287
00:17:24,930 --> 00:17:26,230
How many wart hogs
were there here?

288
00:17:29,430 --> 00:17:31,200
A lot, yes.

289
00:17:31,200 --> 00:17:34,180
And how many wart
hogs were here?

290
00:17:34,180 --> 00:17:37,600
A lot but not as many.

291
00:17:37,600 --> 00:17:39,100
You could count these,
obviously.

292
00:17:39,100 --> 00:17:42,390
But you didn't count them and
you didn't subitize them.

293
00:17:42,390 --> 00:17:45,150
What you did was you got some
sort of general impression of

294
00:17:45,150 --> 00:17:46,400
their numerosity.

295
00:17:52,120 --> 00:17:55,220
This is if you go back to
perception chapter, this is

296
00:17:55,220 --> 00:17:58,850
another Weber's law kind of
thing, or the money example

297
00:17:58,850 --> 00:18:00,580
from last time.

298
00:18:00,580 --> 00:18:04,610
You can also decide something
about how many things there

299
00:18:04,610 --> 00:18:09,690
are there by a sort of
a ratio comparison.

300
00:18:09,690 --> 00:18:12,130
There's more here than here.

301
00:18:12,130 --> 00:18:18,350
If there were 750 here and 745
here you wouldn't know that.

302
00:18:18,350 --> 00:18:21,790
There has to be a critical
proportional difference

303
00:18:21,790 --> 00:18:22,800
between the two.

304
00:18:22,800 --> 00:18:24,980
But given a proportion
difference, that this is

305
00:18:24,980 --> 00:18:27,920
something like 2:1, like that,
it doesn't matter how many

306
00:18:27,920 --> 00:18:30,110
things there are, you simply
know that there's more here

307
00:18:30,110 --> 00:18:31,160
and less here.

308
00:18:31,160 --> 00:18:34,590
That's sort of a crude
sense of numerosity.

309
00:18:38,640 --> 00:18:41,405
What we typically think of when
we think about number is

310
00:18:41,405 --> 00:18:44,060
counting things, and that's
the third property.

311
00:18:44,060 --> 00:18:45,660
So here, you can count them.

312
00:18:45,660 --> 00:18:48,340
Somebody can go and figure out
exactly how many wart hogs

313
00:18:48,340 --> 00:18:49,250
there are there.

314
00:18:49,250 --> 00:18:54,760
You just have to go through and
use your counting ability

315
00:18:54,760 --> 00:18:58,580
to figure that out.

316
00:18:58,580 --> 00:19:00,460
You have that ability.

317
00:19:00,460 --> 00:19:02,950
It seems to be critically
piggybacked

318
00:19:02,950 --> 00:19:07,880
on linguistic ability.

319
00:19:07,880 --> 00:19:11,340
Recent interesting evidence
for that comes from --

320
00:19:11,340 --> 00:19:13,090
I don't know how to pronounce
it properly, but something

321
00:19:13,090 --> 00:19:16,390
like the Bari Rahua tribe
in the Amazon.

322
00:19:16,390 --> 00:19:22,970
Their number terms consist of
1, 2 and more than that.

323
00:19:25,970 --> 00:19:32,960
The result is that they bomb
tasks that require counting.

324
00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:38,230
They can do subitizing tasks,
they can do numerosity tasks,

325
00:19:38,230 --> 00:19:41,430
but they don't do
counting tasks.

326
00:19:41,430 --> 00:19:46,030
They fail versions of the
M&M task in effect.

327
00:19:46,030 --> 00:19:51,330
You say which of these boxes do
you want -- the got fish in

328
00:19:51,330 --> 00:19:53,400
them or something like that,
and one has a little label

329
00:19:53,400 --> 00:19:56,360
with 4 fish on the top and
another has 5 fish on the top

330
00:19:56,360 --> 00:19:58,720
and as far as these guys are
concerned, it's all just got

331
00:19:58,720 --> 00:20:01,560
lots of fish.

332
00:20:01,560 --> 00:20:06,240
What you see here is a task
where this was the

333
00:20:06,240 --> 00:20:12,250
experimenter's marks, and the
Bari Rahua person was asked to

334
00:20:12,250 --> 00:20:13,000
just copy it.

335
00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:16,820
So, one mark, make one mark,
two, I can make two marks,

336
00:20:16,820 --> 00:20:17,870
three, three.

337
00:20:17,870 --> 00:20:21,110
That's just a bunch, I'll
make a bunch of marks.

338
00:20:21,110 --> 00:20:23,420
Once you got out of the
subitizing range they simply

339
00:20:23,420 --> 00:20:26,730
didn't do the task.

340
00:20:26,730 --> 00:20:31,430
I think I'd put these guys on
this article from which I

341
00:20:31,430 --> 00:20:33,870
stole -- this picture may
live on the website.

342
00:20:33,870 --> 00:20:37,460
I seem to remember that that was
one of the things that I

343
00:20:37,460 --> 00:20:38,430
posted there.

344
00:20:38,430 --> 00:20:41,460
So, what to kids have and
how does that tie

345
00:20:41,460 --> 00:20:44,920
into the M&M problem.

346
00:20:44,920 --> 00:20:52,610
Well, turns out that little kids
have babies, have this

347
00:20:52,610 --> 00:20:55,040
numerosity --

348
00:20:55,040 --> 00:20:59,530
Weber's law, comparison kind
of numerosity ability, and

349
00:20:59,530 --> 00:21:02,940
here's an experiment done by
[? Shew ?] and Liz Spelke up

350
00:21:02,940 --> 00:21:06,490
at Harvard that illustrates
that.

351
00:21:06,490 --> 00:21:10,980
You're a baby, you're looking
at this, and every now and

352
00:21:10,980 --> 00:21:13,820
then the display changes.

353
00:21:13,820 --> 00:21:16,650
OK, there's another
bunch of dots.

354
00:21:16,650 --> 00:21:19,130
And another bunch of dots.

355
00:21:19,130 --> 00:21:21,830
What I'm doing is I, the
experimenter am measuring how

356
00:21:21,830 --> 00:21:24,790
long you look at this.

357
00:21:24,790 --> 00:21:27,380
I'm changing the shape and the
distribution of these guys,

358
00:21:27,380 --> 00:21:30,410
but I'm not changing
the number.

359
00:21:30,410 --> 00:21:35,250
You are slowly getting bored, or
to be more technical about

360
00:21:35,250 --> 00:21:37,150
it, you're habituating.

361
00:21:37,150 --> 00:21:42,160
You may recall that from
the learning chapter.

362
00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:44,200
I don't think we talked about
it in the chapter.

363
00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:47,790
Well, we can talk about
it right now.

364
00:21:47,790 --> 00:21:50,750
A bunch of people oriented
to that.

365
00:21:54,450 --> 00:21:57,320
Now those people are having
no problem at all

366
00:21:57,320 --> 00:21:59,060
veeing back out again.

367
00:21:59,060 --> 00:22:00,250
That's habituation.

368
00:22:00,250 --> 00:22:03,360
You do it, babies do it, slugs
do it, everybody does it.

369
00:22:03,360 --> 00:22:04,770
Great.

370
00:22:04,770 --> 00:22:07,700
Useful technique, because the
baby's sitting here saying

371
00:22:07,700 --> 00:22:10,510
this is all kind of more or less
the same and it's just

372
00:22:10,510 --> 00:22:14,330
not that interesting.

373
00:22:14,330 --> 00:22:18,830
Wait a second, that's
interesting, says the baby.

374
00:22:18,830 --> 00:22:21,730
And the baby says it
by looking more.

375
00:22:21,730 --> 00:22:27,570
What happens here is that
looking time goes down, down,

376
00:22:27,570 --> 00:22:30,470
down, down as the number on
each trial stays the same.

377
00:22:30,470 --> 00:22:33,390
Then when you jump from 8 to
16, the baby says hey,

378
00:22:33,390 --> 00:22:35,080
something's happened, I gotta
take a look at this.

379
00:22:35,080 --> 00:22:37,030
Do 16 for awhile, blah,
blah, blah, blah,

380
00:22:37,030 --> 00:22:39,200
blah, blah, blah, blah.

381
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:42,140
What this tells you is that
the baby could tell the

382
00:22:42,140 --> 00:22:44,890
difference between 8 and 16.

383
00:22:44,890 --> 00:22:47,980
The reason for changing the
shape and the distribution and

384
00:22:47,980 --> 00:22:50,750
the density and stuff like
that is to make sure that

385
00:22:50,750 --> 00:22:53,390
that's not what you're
picking up on.

386
00:22:53,390 --> 00:22:55,680
[? Shew ?] and Spelke were
careful about that.

387
00:22:55,680 --> 00:23:01,280
So what you're picking on
here is numerosity.

388
00:23:01,280 --> 00:23:08,430
Babies can do that, but if you
go from 8 to 9, nothing

389
00:23:08,430 --> 00:23:09,730
happens here.

390
00:23:09,730 --> 00:23:13,380
In fact, if you go from 8 to
12, a 50% increase in dots,

391
00:23:13,380 --> 00:23:17,620
nothing happens here with, how
old are these babies -- six

392
00:23:17,620 --> 00:23:19,110
month old babies.

393
00:23:19,110 --> 00:23:23,330
So, 8 to 16, a 2:1 change --
that babies pick up on.

394
00:23:23,330 --> 00:23:37,720
So, one thing we know that if
we're talking about number,

395
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:49,040
the starting spot isn't zero for
number sense in infants.

396
00:23:49,040 --> 00:23:54,830
The numerosity piece, some chunk
of the numerosity piece

397
00:23:54,830 --> 00:23:56,330
is there for starters.

398
00:23:56,330 --> 00:24:02,350
Perhaps more dramatically, the
subitizing piece is there, and

399
00:24:02,350 --> 00:24:09,300
the subitizing piece is there
along with what seems to be an

400
00:24:09,300 --> 00:24:11,640
innate mathematical ability.

401
00:24:11,640 --> 00:24:14,270
Little kids can add
and subtract.

402
00:24:14,270 --> 00:24:17,270
Babies can add and subtract.

403
00:24:17,270 --> 00:24:19,450
This was a surprise.

404
00:24:22,310 --> 00:24:26,310
This is work done by karen Wynn,
and it is worth making

405
00:24:26,310 --> 00:24:30,760
the historical note that she was
a TA for this course once

406
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:33,840
upon a time, now a professor
at Yale.

407
00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:36,960
But in any case, she
figured out that

408
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:39,020
babies can add and subtract.

409
00:24:39,020 --> 00:24:42,470
Look, if you ask a baby what's
one plus one, you get much the

410
00:24:42,470 --> 00:24:44,800
same answer as if you
asked the baby which

411
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:45,950
way is the E pointing.

412
00:24:45,950 --> 00:24:49,950
You gotta get clever about
this sort of thing.

413
00:24:49,950 --> 00:24:52,370
Here's how Karen got
clever about it.

414
00:24:52,370 --> 00:24:53,800
So, you're looking
at a screen.

415
00:24:53,800 --> 00:24:59,300
You're a little baby looking at
a screen like this and you

416
00:24:59,300 --> 00:25:01,310
see a hand come in
with an object.

417
00:25:12,050 --> 00:25:15,990
And you see a hand come
in with another one.

418
00:25:15,990 --> 00:25:19,020
You got a pretty good idea
what's going on here, right.

419
00:25:19,020 --> 00:25:24,930
So, if I lift the screen, what
do you expect to see?

420
00:25:29,510 --> 00:25:34,160
Now, we're going to
do this again.

421
00:25:34,160 --> 00:25:35,850
The speed would be the same, of
course, I just didn't want

422
00:25:35,850 --> 00:25:38,080
to keep sliding them
in slowly.

423
00:25:46,740 --> 00:25:51,840
The baby will respond to
this by looking longer.

424
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:54,010
The baby will say --

425
00:25:54,010 --> 00:25:56,270
who knows what the baby will
say, but the baby is

426
00:25:56,270 --> 00:25:59,605
apparently in effect saying
put one thing in this, two

427
00:25:59,605 --> 00:26:05,220
things in here, two stuff,
two wart hogs back there.

428
00:26:05,220 --> 00:26:08,400
Now there's only one wart hog
and this violates the rules of

429
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:11,170
the universe and I said better
look at this for a while to

430
00:26:11,170 --> 00:26:14,010
figure out what's going on.

431
00:26:14,010 --> 00:26:23,670
You can use this technique to
show that babies can do --

432
00:26:23,670 --> 00:26:25,620
do I have a subtraction
one here, I forget.

433
00:26:33,460 --> 00:26:35,440
It works for monkeys, too.

434
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:37,350
We'll talk about that
in a minute.

435
00:26:37,350 --> 00:26:40,220
But you can do addition,
you can do subtraction.

436
00:26:40,220 --> 00:26:44,820
So, subtraction, you have the
two things here, you put down

437
00:26:44,820 --> 00:26:49,310
the screen, the hand comes
in and pulls one out.

438
00:26:49,310 --> 00:26:52,440
When the screen comes up the
baby expects to see one.

439
00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:56,820
If the babiy sees zero or the
baby sees two, the baby says

440
00:26:56,820 --> 00:27:00,260
something weird's going on here,
I need to think about

441
00:27:00,260 --> 00:27:03,160
this for a while.

442
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:06,160
Now, if you do this with big
numbers outside of the

443
00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:09,080
subitizing range, you don't
get the result.

444
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:13,110
So, you stick 15 wart hogs back
there and you lift up the

445
00:27:13,110 --> 00:27:16,190
screen and there's 13 wart
hogs and the kid

446
00:27:16,190 --> 00:27:18,570
says I don't care.

447
00:27:18,570 --> 00:27:23,000
Once you get above about
3 with babies, it

448
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:24,240
doesn't work anymore.

449
00:27:24,240 --> 00:27:34,580
So, what you get is evidence for
subitizing being present

450
00:27:34,580 --> 00:27:40,360
and some sort of addition and
subtraction kind of operation

451
00:27:40,360 --> 00:27:42,890
for, essentially as early
as you want to test it.

452
00:27:42,890 --> 00:27:45,980
You can also get these abilities
in animals -- that's

453
00:27:45,980 --> 00:27:51,060
what this slide is intended
to remind me to tell you.

454
00:27:51,060 --> 00:27:54,940
Animals, certainly Macaque
monkeys will show numerosity

455
00:27:54,940 --> 00:27:58,760
effects, and they can
also do this sort of

456
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:01,120
Karen Wynn style math.

457
00:28:01,120 --> 00:28:05,920
They prefer eggplants -- at
least Marc Hauser's monkeys

458
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:08,930
like eggplant, so that's why
there are eggplants here.

459
00:28:08,930 --> 00:28:11,820
And you worry about doing this
in the lab, because maybe your

460
00:28:11,820 --> 00:28:16,520
lab monkeys have led this
elaborately studied life and

461
00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:18,980
are kind of smart.

462
00:28:18,980 --> 00:28:21,700
Hauser went down to this island
in the Caribbean where

463
00:28:21,700 --> 00:28:24,680
he's got a free-ranging
troop of monkeys.

464
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:29,080
Then you kind of have to coax
them into playing your game.

465
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:33,040
There's this great video that
Marc has of monkeys -- he's

466
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:36,280
hanging out with his eggplants,
then he's starting

467
00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:40,540
to do this eggplant puppet
show with the Macaque's

468
00:28:40,540 --> 00:28:42,550
looking longer at
the weird ones.

469
00:28:42,550 --> 00:28:45,002
The guy put two eggplants
there, there's

470
00:28:45,002 --> 00:28:45,980
only one there now.

471
00:28:45,980 --> 00:28:48,990
Hope he's going to feed me
some of these eggplants

472
00:28:48,990 --> 00:28:49,880
eventually.

473
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:52,080
But in any case, monkeys
can do the task.

474
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:57,060
Monkeys will look longer at
things that violate their

475
00:28:57,060 --> 00:28:58,300
expectation.

476
00:28:58,300 --> 00:29:01,330
However, monkeys don't count.

477
00:29:01,330 --> 00:29:05,090
At least they don't count the
way that you and I count.

478
00:29:05,090 --> 00:29:07,690
This goes for great apes.

479
00:29:07,690 --> 00:29:11,060
Fine, let's go find the
brightest beast other than

480
00:29:11,060 --> 00:29:13,360
humans that we can.

481
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:16,150
There's at least one chimp
who's been trained

482
00:29:16,150 --> 00:29:20,040
for 20 years --

483
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:22,370
oh, I misspoke when I talked
about this in Concourse.

484
00:29:22,370 --> 00:29:23,920
I'd said he'd been trained
for nine years and

485
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:25,490
never gotten past 20.

486
00:29:25,490 --> 00:29:26,680
It's worse than that.

487
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:28,450
He's been trained for
20 years you never

488
00:29:28,450 --> 00:29:30,520
gotten past nine counting.

489
00:29:30,520 --> 00:29:33,750
He can count to nine, do pretty
good stuff up to nine.

490
00:29:33,750 --> 00:29:36,760
But he's doing this by

491
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:38,630
basically association learning.

492
00:29:44,700 --> 00:29:51,130
You can train the monkey to
realize that this sign or this

493
00:29:51,130 --> 00:29:54,310
graphic or something
means nine things.

494
00:29:54,310 --> 00:29:58,340
But this is very different from
what you and I can do.

495
00:29:58,340 --> 00:30:03,510
It didn't take you 20 years and
you got well beyond nine.

496
00:30:03,510 --> 00:30:08,950
Counting seems to be heavily
dependent on two things.

497
00:30:08,950 --> 00:30:12,940
One is language, and
the other is an act

498
00:30:12,940 --> 00:30:14,690
of inductive reasoning.

499
00:30:14,690 --> 00:30:18,360
You can sort of see counting
happening, the development of

500
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:26,190
counting in a series of steps.

501
00:30:26,190 --> 00:30:34,900
Kids, as they are learning
language, learn that there is

502
00:30:34,900 --> 00:30:44,500
this kind of game about saying
1, 2, 3, four and so on, that

503
00:30:44,500 --> 00:30:47,780
parents really like to play.

504
00:30:47,780 --> 00:30:50,050
If you start counting
they'll give you

505
00:30:50,050 --> 00:30:52,850
the cookies and stuff.

506
00:30:52,850 --> 00:30:56,230
Good things happen.

507
00:30:56,230 --> 00:30:59,370
They don't have any particular
clue initially that this maps

508
00:30:59,370 --> 00:31:04,850
on to anything in particular.

509
00:31:08,690 --> 00:31:11,150
So, what you get with like two
and a half year old kids is a

510
00:31:11,150 --> 00:31:16,630
two and a half year old kid, if
you ask for one cookie will

511
00:31:16,630 --> 00:31:18,200
give you one cookie.

512
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:20,620
But if you ask for anything else
-- give me two cookies,

513
00:31:20,620 --> 00:31:22,990
give me four cookies, give me
whatever, they'll give you

514
00:31:22,990 --> 00:31:24,670
some random --

515
00:31:24,670 --> 00:31:25,700
here, have some cookies.

516
00:31:25,700 --> 00:31:28,850
It's one and other stuff.

517
00:31:28,850 --> 00:31:36,060
Eventually they learn to map
the counting onto the

518
00:31:36,060 --> 00:31:42,030
subitizing range and then
start blowing it later.

519
00:31:42,030 --> 00:31:45,430
If you have little sibs or
cousins or stuff that you've

520
00:31:45,430 --> 00:31:49,790
hung around with, you may have
seen them counting things --

521
00:31:49,790 --> 00:31:56,640
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 12.

522
00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:59,330
They got this notion that the
numbers keep going in some

523
00:31:59,330 --> 00:32:02,460
fashion, but once you get out of
the small numbers it's not

524
00:32:02,460 --> 00:32:05,290
terribly clear what's
going on there.

525
00:32:05,290 --> 00:32:09,090
But even in this stage you can
start to see the development

526
00:32:09,090 --> 00:32:12,260
of something more
sophisticated.

527
00:32:12,260 --> 00:32:15,670
Six -- they may not know how
many six's, they know six is a

528
00:32:15,670 --> 00:32:17,630
lot of stuff.

529
00:32:17,630 --> 00:32:20,620
If you ask for six cookies
you'll get some arbitrary

530
00:32:20,620 --> 00:32:23,830
number of cookies.

531
00:32:23,830 --> 00:32:33,970
But if you ask a little kid if
I take a lot of cookies and I

532
00:32:33,970 --> 00:32:38,390
add a few, do I still have
a lot of cookies?

533
00:32:38,390 --> 00:32:42,400
Kid says yeah, it works.

534
00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:44,310
So, alright, so we know that.

535
00:32:44,310 --> 00:32:49,400
Now, if I have six cookies, can
you give me six cookies?

536
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:51,300
Some random number of cookies.

537
00:32:51,300 --> 00:32:55,420
If I have six cookies and I add
some more cookies, do I

538
00:32:55,420 --> 00:32:58,560
still have six cookies?

539
00:32:58,560 --> 00:32:58,820
No.

540
00:32:58,820 --> 00:33:02,510
You got a lot of cookies but
it's not the same a lotta.

541
00:33:02,510 --> 00:33:05,520
So, even when they don't really
know how many cookies

542
00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:13,750
you've got, they have the notion
that the number names

543
00:33:13,750 --> 00:33:16,470
are naming something specific.

544
00:33:16,470 --> 00:33:18,520
They don't quite get what it
is, but it's something

545
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:23,060
specific in a way that a
term like a lot is not.

546
00:33:23,060 --> 00:33:30,900
Eventually, you make the
breakthrough that you can

547
00:33:30,900 --> 00:33:36,360
count, basically, and if you
add one to each of them you

548
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:39,740
can just keep doing
this forever.

549
00:33:39,740 --> 00:33:41,450
Again, I don't know how much
you hang around with little

550
00:33:41,450 --> 00:33:45,290
kids or remember your own
experience, because this is

551
00:33:45,290 --> 00:33:47,390
getting old enough that you
might actually remember this

552
00:33:47,390 --> 00:33:52,260
state yourself, of asking
what the biggest number

553
00:33:52,260 --> 00:33:53,940
in the world is.

554
00:33:53,940 --> 00:33:55,560
Anybody remember asking what
the biggest number

555
00:33:55,560 --> 00:33:58,650
in the world is?

556
00:33:58,650 --> 00:34:00,670
That's the problem with MIT
students, right, they figured

557
00:34:00,670 --> 00:34:03,220
all this stuff out when
they were like two.

558
00:34:03,220 --> 00:34:07,430
So anyway, little kids want to
know what the biggest number

559
00:34:07,430 --> 00:34:09,470
in the world is, and so you say
to the little kid, well

560
00:34:09,470 --> 00:34:11,800
what do you think the biggest
number in the world is?

561
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,470
Well, it's a million.

562
00:34:14,470 --> 00:34:15,370
OK.

563
00:34:15,370 --> 00:34:19,410
What happens if we had a million
plus one, is there a

564
00:34:19,410 --> 00:34:22,580
number for that?

565
00:34:22,580 --> 00:34:24,250
I guess a million and
one's the biggest

566
00:34:24,250 --> 00:34:26,040
number in the world.

567
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:27,860
Well, [UNINTELLIGIBLE] add
a million and two.

568
00:34:27,860 --> 00:34:28,840
You can keep doing
this for a while.

569
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:31,920
Eventually, around the time
when you get in this

570
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:37,480
conversation, the kid catches on
to the notion that you can

571
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:40,660
always get a bigger one.

572
00:34:40,660 --> 00:34:46,260
This is really the very boring
car rides sometimes.

573
00:34:46,260 --> 00:34:47,980
Do you want to see how
high I can count?

574
00:34:47,980 --> 00:34:50,780
That's a kind of cute game
with a three-year old.

575
00:34:50,780 --> 00:34:53,330
Aw, look, he can get
all the way to 20.

576
00:34:53,330 --> 00:34:56,480
By the time you get a 4 or 5
year old, million and one,

577
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:58,590
million and two, million
and three.

578
00:34:58,590 --> 00:35:03,460
OK, we've made it to California
kid, shutup.

579
00:35:03,460 --> 00:35:10,100
What you get is you've got this
basic numeric competence

580
00:35:10,100 --> 00:35:13,980
or core knowledge, as Liz
Spelke would call it.

581
00:35:13,980 --> 00:35:19,740
Then you're waiting for the
development of language.

582
00:35:19,740 --> 00:35:22,310
When you get language you
can then get this

583
00:35:22,310 --> 00:35:23,710
counting piece to work.

584
00:35:23,710 --> 00:35:26,060
When you got the counting piece
to work, you can combine

585
00:35:26,060 --> 00:35:29,990
it with your ability to make
the inductive leap that

586
00:35:29,990 --> 00:35:31,850
numbers go on forever.

587
00:35:31,850 --> 00:35:33,610
Then you're in a position
to go off to school

588
00:35:33,610 --> 00:35:34,860
and learn some math.

589
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:40,580
There's, in a sense, not an
adult level of numerical

590
00:35:40,580 --> 00:35:41,170
competence.

591
00:35:41,170 --> 00:35:43,000
You guys know more about
numbers than I

592
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:45,900
know, I would imagine.

593
00:35:45,900 --> 00:35:50,140
But the ability to go off and
learn that kind of math is

594
00:35:50,140 --> 00:35:54,290
based on this core knowledge,
then waiting on language

595
00:35:54,290 --> 00:35:57,530
before you can make
the leap to an

596
00:35:57,530 --> 00:36:03,800
ability to do 180 whatever.

597
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:08,200
So, it's an example, if you
like, of the synergistic

598
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:10,740
combination of information
from a couple

599
00:36:10,740 --> 00:36:11,790
of different realms.

600
00:36:11,790 --> 00:36:20,470
Let's switch to the problem of
childhood animism that, if

601
00:36:20,470 --> 00:36:23,270
you're not completely confused
from my earlier mis-speaking,

602
00:36:23,270 --> 00:36:27,220
animism is the tendency to
say is the sun alive?

603
00:36:27,220 --> 00:36:27,750
Yes.

604
00:36:27,750 --> 00:36:29,260
Are clouds alive?

605
00:36:29,260 --> 00:36:30,320
Yes.

606
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:36,220
That seems quite different
from what you and I do.

607
00:36:36,220 --> 00:36:42,410
One might wonder exactly how
different it really is.

608
00:36:42,410 --> 00:36:45,890
Does it really reflect a
fundamental problem with the

609
00:36:45,890 --> 00:36:49,360
concept alive?

610
00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:54,270
It's not that's obvious how you
map the concept like that,

611
00:36:54,270 --> 00:36:55,420
even as an adult.

612
00:36:55,420 --> 00:37:00,120
This is perhaps easier
to think about in

613
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:03,720
connection with dead.

614
00:37:03,720 --> 00:37:06,220
Mapping dead onto a
discrete set of

615
00:37:06,220 --> 00:37:07,836
things is not that trivial.

616
00:37:07,836 --> 00:37:10,690
Is a rock dead?

617
00:37:10,690 --> 00:37:13,970
Probably not because it was
never alive, right.

618
00:37:13,970 --> 00:37:16,850
Is George Washington dead?

619
00:37:16,850 --> 00:37:17,646
Seems about right.

620
00:37:17,646 --> 00:37:22,530
Is he dead in the same way that
something that you can,

621
00:37:22,530 --> 00:37:25,670
like a cat that just
recently died --

622
00:37:25,670 --> 00:37:27,190
the here, dead, now.

623
00:37:27,190 --> 00:37:28,980
Is that's the same?

624
00:37:28,980 --> 00:37:31,030
How about a dinosaur?

625
00:37:31,030 --> 00:37:33,400
Or the dinosaurs, are
the dinosaur's dead?

626
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:35,236
Well yes, they're dead but
they're also extinction, which

627
00:37:35,236 --> 00:37:38,340
is somehow kind of different.

628
00:37:38,340 --> 00:37:42,470
Or to use an example from
driving around, now that my

629
00:37:42,470 --> 00:37:46,660
kids have gotten out of the
counting to a million stage --

630
00:37:46,660 --> 00:37:51,490
I don't know how we got on the
subject of what is alive.

631
00:37:51,490 --> 00:37:53,340
Maybe because I was thinking
about this lecture.

632
00:37:53,340 --> 00:37:57,750
But anyway, my 10th grader
asked my 3rd

633
00:37:57,750 --> 00:37:59,180
grader is fire alive?

634
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:05,840
Well, I don't know about the 3rd
grader, but it took dad in

635
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:09,850
the front seat a surprisingly
long time to figure --

636
00:38:09,850 --> 00:38:13,260
dad knew that the answer is no,
but the principled reason

637
00:38:13,260 --> 00:38:18,430
why it's no, took me a couple
of beats to get to.

638
00:38:18,430 --> 00:38:23,770
Because fire breathes, right,
it grows, it reproduces, it

639
00:38:23,770 --> 00:38:26,930
can die, it can do all
those good things.

640
00:38:26,930 --> 00:38:29,430
Turns out that in 10th grade
biology they teach you that if

641
00:38:29,430 --> 00:38:34,040
you're going to be alive you've
gotta be made of cells,

642
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:39,090
and fire's not made of cells,
except that then you get into

643
00:38:39,090 --> 00:38:42,370
11th grade English and you read
some sci fi novel where

644
00:38:42,370 --> 00:38:46,780
this thing is alive but it's
just a forcefield in deep

645
00:38:46,780 --> 00:38:48,400
space or something like that.

646
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:52,060
I don't know what to
do about that.

647
00:38:52,060 --> 00:38:57,200
Concepts like alive are pretty
complex stuff, and the fact

648
00:38:57,200 --> 00:38:59,710
that a kid doesn't map it
exactly the same way you map

649
00:38:59,710 --> 00:39:02,080
it may not be that definitive.

650
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:05,380
Does the kid have a concept
at all that they can use?

651
00:39:05,380 --> 00:39:06,780
That's what we really
want to know.

652
00:39:06,780 --> 00:39:08,800
What's really going on there?

653
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:12,520
So maybe we ought to ask the
question a little bit

654
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:13,680
differently.

655
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:17,080
Kid had some notion of
what alive things do.

656
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:24,510
So suppose we ask a kid
does a cat breathe?

657
00:39:24,510 --> 00:39:26,120
Yeah, a cat breathes.

658
00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:27,710
How about a cow?

659
00:39:27,710 --> 00:39:29,570
Yeah, a cow breathes.

660
00:39:29,570 --> 00:39:31,790
How about the sun?

661
00:39:31,790 --> 00:39:32,680
I don't think so.

662
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:33,090
The moon?

663
00:39:33,090 --> 00:39:33,460
No.

664
00:39:33,460 --> 00:39:34,070
The clouds?

665
00:39:34,070 --> 00:39:35,940
No.

666
00:39:35,940 --> 00:39:38,820
And you can do the same
thing with babies.

667
00:39:38,820 --> 00:39:41,970
Not asking the babies,
but talking about

668
00:39:41,970 --> 00:39:44,900
can a cat have babies?

669
00:39:44,900 --> 00:39:45,600
Yeah, sure.

670
00:39:45,600 --> 00:39:47,770
Can the sun have babies?

671
00:39:47,770 --> 00:39:49,730
No.

672
00:39:49,730 --> 00:39:52,390
You get the feeling that there's
a concept there that

673
00:39:52,390 --> 00:39:57,910
they're just not using the word
alive the way that you

674
00:39:57,910 --> 00:39:59,230
and I are using it.

675
00:39:59,230 --> 00:40:03,320
Well, maybe all you're looking
at here is the fact that they

676
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:04,460
don't actually have a concept.

677
00:40:04,460 --> 00:40:06,710
What they have is a long list
of learned instances.

678
00:40:06,710 --> 00:40:09,620
They are hang out at these
fancy upper middle class

679
00:40:09,620 --> 00:40:13,360
preschools where they get taught
kitty has babies, cow

680
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:16,430
has babies, and they never gets
taught sun has babies,

681
00:40:16,430 --> 00:40:18,120
because the sun doesn't
have babies.

682
00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:19,380
And so they learn
all this stuff.

683
00:40:19,380 --> 00:40:20,780
Maybe it's not a concept,
maybe it's

684
00:40:20,780 --> 00:40:22,560
just a list of instances.

685
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:23,920
How can we figure this out?

686
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:29,020
Well, Sue Carey did an
experiment where what she did

687
00:40:29,020 --> 00:40:32,150
was she taught kids
something new.

688
00:40:32,150 --> 00:40:36,420
She said see this cat?

689
00:40:36,420 --> 00:40:38,970
This cat has an omentum.

690
00:40:38,970 --> 00:40:40,850
And you have an omentum.

691
00:40:40,850 --> 00:40:43,350
And the cow has an omentum.

692
00:40:43,350 --> 00:40:46,250
Now, how about the sheep?

693
00:40:46,250 --> 00:40:48,790
Think it's got omentum?

694
00:40:48,790 --> 00:40:50,230
Probaby got no mentum.

695
00:40:50,230 --> 00:40:51,900
And the dog?

696
00:40:51,900 --> 00:40:53,300
Yeah, the dog's probably
got one.

697
00:40:53,300 --> 00:40:56,230
How about a fish?

698
00:40:56,230 --> 00:40:57,780
Yeah, probably, could be.

699
00:40:57,780 --> 00:40:58,450
Worm?

700
00:40:58,450 --> 00:41:00,020
I don't know.

701
00:41:00,020 --> 00:41:00,770
Rock?

702
00:41:00,770 --> 00:41:02,630
No, rock doesn't an omentum.

703
00:41:02,630 --> 00:41:03,850
How about sun?

704
00:41:03,850 --> 00:41:05,590
No, sun doesn't have
an omentum.

705
00:41:05,590 --> 00:41:07,960
You don't have one either
it turns out.

706
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:11,180
She wanted a real biological
term, but I think it's some

707
00:41:11,180 --> 00:41:13,980
weird membrane that an insect
has or something like that.

708
00:41:13,980 --> 00:41:16,300
But the point was that it wasn't
something that you

709
00:41:16,300 --> 00:41:17,690
would have ever learned.

710
00:41:17,690 --> 00:41:21,780
It's a new piece of knowledge,
and if you say that things in

711
00:41:21,780 --> 00:41:25,770
this category, things in the
category that are encompassed

712
00:41:25,770 --> 00:41:31,390
by cats, cows and you all have
this, who else has it?

713
00:41:31,390 --> 00:41:35,660
And little kids, three,
four-year old kids, map this

714
00:41:35,660 --> 00:41:37,710
in a plausible kind of a way.

715
00:41:37,710 --> 00:41:40,720
It might map something like
mammal, it might map something

716
00:41:40,720 --> 00:41:42,080
like animal.

717
00:41:42,080 --> 00:41:44,740
I don't remember if any of her
kids mapped something like

718
00:41:44,740 --> 00:41:47,360
alive in which case they would
assert that a tree had it too

719
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:48,160
or something.

720
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:56,250
But it maps a concept that has
a biological ring to it.

721
00:41:56,250 --> 00:41:59,400
What's the difference between
the childhood use of these

722
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:01,670
concepts and the adult use
of these concepts?

723
00:42:01,670 --> 00:42:04,980
It seems to be, in this
case, education.

724
00:42:04,980 --> 00:42:08,720
You go to school to learn
the right concepts.

725
00:42:08,720 --> 00:42:13,830
In this sense, there is
no firm adult state.

726
00:42:13,830 --> 00:42:18,770
My job here is to teach you a
collection of facts and the

727
00:42:18,770 --> 00:42:21,130
right concepts in psychology.

728
00:42:21,130 --> 00:42:25,790
But I can teach you some of them
and I keep learning new

729
00:42:25,790 --> 00:42:30,880
ones, and the adult par keeps
sort of drifting there.

730
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:33,470
You sort of go off to learn
these sort of concepts.

731
00:42:33,470 --> 00:42:37,950
But you don't learn to have
a concept per se.

732
00:42:37,950 --> 00:42:41,420
What the kid is doing -- well,
actually it's rather similar

733
00:42:41,420 --> 00:42:42,840
to what we're doing here.

734
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:52,420
The kid is mustering the data
that is available to him, and

735
00:42:52,420 --> 00:42:53,990
working with the concept--.

736
00:42:53,990 --> 00:42:56,960
So what do you think the concept
of alive is for a

737
00:42:56,960 --> 00:42:58,190
little kid?

738
00:42:58,190 --> 00:43:01,850
What do you think goes into it
that causes little kids to

739
00:43:01,850 --> 00:43:06,380
give the wrong answer when asked
by Piaget what's alive

740
00:43:06,380 --> 00:43:07,360
and what's not?

741
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:10,940
What's the critical difference
between your notion of alive

742
00:43:10,940 --> 00:43:15,770
that you picked up in 10th grade
biology and a four-year

743
00:43:15,770 --> 00:43:18,590
old's notion of alive?

744
00:43:18,590 --> 00:43:19,000
Anybody?

745
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:19,580
Yup?

746
00:43:19,580 --> 00:43:23,210
AUDIENCE: Something alive is
something that moves and you

747
00:43:23,210 --> 00:43:24,420
didn't see how [INAUDIBLE].

748
00:43:24,420 --> 00:43:25,100
PROFESSOR: Yeah.

749
00:43:25,100 --> 00:43:28,140
So moving on its own seems
to be an important--.

750
00:43:28,140 --> 00:43:32,080
So cars aren't alive because
you've got to make them move

751
00:43:32,080 --> 00:43:38,390
in some fashion, but
self-produced motion seems to

752
00:43:38,390 --> 00:43:40,590
be an important part of the
definition, and the sun and

753
00:43:40,590 --> 00:43:44,490
the clouds and the moon seem to
scootch around in the sky,

754
00:43:44,490 --> 00:43:48,330
particularly if you're driving
in that car, in ways that

755
00:43:48,330 --> 00:43:50,330
suggest that it might
be alive.

756
00:43:50,330 --> 00:43:52,250
It gets a little more
complicated because kids have

757
00:43:52,250 --> 00:43:56,554
also learned that trees are
alive, and outside of Lord of

758
00:43:56,554 --> 00:43:58,790
the Rings, trees don't do much
in the way of wandering

759
00:43:58,790 --> 00:44:05,170
around, but growing on your
own is good, too.

760
00:44:05,170 --> 00:44:07,700
But that would be part of the
biological definition.

761
00:44:07,700 --> 00:44:13,760
It's the self-produced motion
thing that kids overuse in

762
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,130
their definition, seemingly,
that you don't use.

763
00:44:17,130 --> 00:44:20,470
You can see if you get
transcripts of little kids

764
00:44:20,470 --> 00:44:25,980
using language, you get a
feeling for this little

765
00:44:25,980 --> 00:44:30,200
scientist aspect of
childhood concept.

766
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:34,530
Well, concept formation,
concept verification.

767
00:44:34,530 --> 00:44:44,340
So, here from the what is alive
literature is a kid who

768
00:44:44,340 --> 00:44:46,740
is asked are rocks alive,
and the answer is

769
00:44:46,740 --> 00:44:50,960
yes, rocks are alive.

770
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:53,950
But they're only alive until you
step on them and then they

771
00:44:53,950 --> 00:44:57,530
die, which is kind of
reasonable, right.

772
00:44:57,530 --> 00:44:59,520
The kid's got presumably
some experience with

773
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:01,070
other things like that.

774
00:45:01,070 --> 00:45:03,870
This ant -- the ant's
alive, I step on it,

775
00:45:03,870 --> 00:45:05,120
it's not alive anymore.

776
00:45:07,820 --> 00:45:11,040
And this kid produces some
evidence in favor of this

777
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:17,650
theory, which is if you look
on a path, how big are the

778
00:45:17,650 --> 00:45:21,220
rocks on average?

779
00:45:21,220 --> 00:45:24,480
You could take a walk in the
woods down a rocky kind of

780
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:26,740
path, there are rocks on it,
they're kind of small rocks.

781
00:45:26,740 --> 00:45:30,160
You look off across
at the mountains,

782
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:32,270
how big are the rocks?

783
00:45:32,270 --> 00:45:33,110
They're huge.

784
00:45:33,110 --> 00:45:34,190
What's going on here?

785
00:45:34,190 --> 00:45:36,740
Well, on a path people are
walking all the time so the

786
00:45:36,740 --> 00:45:41,280
rocks die real young and they
never get to grow big.

787
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:44,440
Whereas the rocks off the path
out in the mountains, they got

788
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:46,590
to grow to be really
big rocks.

789
00:45:46,590 --> 00:45:50,670
It's not a correct theory, but
you can see the kid using the

790
00:45:50,670 --> 00:45:52,610
data he's got.

791
00:45:52,610 --> 00:45:54,640
right, a certain amount
of data there.

792
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:57,800
If I step on it, it dies.

793
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:00,970
Maybe that's what happens to
rocks and people step more

794
00:46:00,970 --> 00:46:03,590
here than they step there, so
big rocks, little rocks.

795
00:46:03,590 --> 00:46:04,850
It all hangs together.

796
00:46:04,850 --> 00:46:06,660
I got a great theory here.

797
00:46:09,410 --> 00:46:11,920
Another one, are rocks alive?

798
00:46:11,920 --> 00:46:12,300
Yes.

799
00:46:12,300 --> 00:46:13,450
Can they have babies?

800
00:46:13,450 --> 00:46:14,100
Yes.

801
00:46:14,100 --> 00:46:15,340
Are all rocks alive?

802
00:46:15,340 --> 00:46:16,910
No, some rocks are dead.

803
00:46:16,910 --> 00:46:19,510
How can you tell if
a rock is dead?

804
00:46:19,510 --> 00:46:22,150
Well, the dead ones
just lie there.

805
00:46:22,150 --> 00:46:28,540
This is capturing the notion
that motion is important in

806
00:46:28,540 --> 00:46:32,640
little kids' definitions of
the notion of aliveness.

807
00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:38,080
I don't know how many
rocks you saw moving

808
00:46:38,080 --> 00:46:40,420
under their own power.

809
00:46:40,420 --> 00:46:43,920
In any case, you can
see the little

810
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:45,390
scientist aspect of this.

811
00:46:45,390 --> 00:46:47,720
OK, so what's the starting
point here?

812
00:46:50,430 --> 00:46:57,420
The concepts that you're
building seem to have some

813
00:46:57,420 --> 00:46:59,850
foundations that can be picked
up very early and

814
00:46:59,850 --> 00:47:01,350
are probably innate.

815
00:47:01,350 --> 00:47:04,040
I'll just talk about
two of them here.

816
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:08,070
So concepts like about things
like aliveness.

817
00:47:08,070 --> 00:47:12,260
If you're going to decide that a
thing is alive, you need for

818
00:47:12,260 --> 00:47:14,870
starters to know that
it is a thing.

819
00:47:14,870 --> 00:47:19,000
So you need to have some
notion of an object.

820
00:47:21,630 --> 00:47:26,690
The other thing you need is
some notion that objects,

821
00:47:26,690 --> 00:47:30,080
classes of objects,
have essences --

822
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:36,960
I think it's on the handout
somewhere as --

823
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:39,510
towards the bottom of page 2
says essence and there's a

824
00:47:39,510 --> 00:47:42,010
reference of Susan Gelman's
work on psychological

825
00:47:42,010 --> 00:47:46,680
essentialism -- the notion of
an essence is a property

826
00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:53,680
that's not visible or at least
not currently visible.

827
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:56,760
In order to have these sort of
category things, you've got to

828
00:47:56,760 --> 00:48:02,650
have the notion that objects
continue to have properties

829
00:48:02,650 --> 00:48:04,200
even if you can't see that.

830
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:09,770
So, for example -- well, I won't
embarrass anybody -- but

831
00:48:09,770 --> 00:48:14,500
there are people here presently
who are not moving,

832
00:48:14,500 --> 00:48:17,340
who are not, to all appearances,
growing.

833
00:48:17,340 --> 00:48:19,620
I can't tell from this distance
whether they're made

834
00:48:19,620 --> 00:48:21,980
of cells and they don't appear
to be having babies or

835
00:48:21,980 --> 00:48:23,710
anything like that.

836
00:48:23,710 --> 00:48:29,280
Nevertheless, I assume
that they are alive.

837
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:32,770
That's part of their essence.

838
00:48:32,770 --> 00:48:36,870
That this aliveness is something
that I attribute to

839
00:48:36,870 --> 00:48:38,980
that object without being
able to see it.

840
00:48:38,980 --> 00:48:43,970
Now what's the evidence that
little kids have that?

841
00:48:43,970 --> 00:48:46,580
Well, I'll tell you that and
then we'll have a break and

842
00:48:46,580 --> 00:48:48,840
then we'll go on to the problem

843
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:50,090
of egocentric behavior.

844
00:48:57,140 --> 00:49:00,630
Let's start with evidence
that babies know

845
00:49:00,630 --> 00:49:04,890
something about objects.

846
00:49:04,890 --> 00:49:06,460
Here's a tube.

847
00:49:06,460 --> 00:49:09,150
If I was doing this right, I'd
show you that there's nothing

848
00:49:09,150 --> 00:49:10,400
in the tube.

849
00:49:12,940 --> 00:49:26,600
And then I would take a stuffed
animal -- he's a duck.

850
00:49:26,600 --> 00:49:32,740
we take the duck and he's a
squishy duck, so I'm going to

851
00:49:32,740 --> 00:49:34,740
stuff him in the tube.

852
00:49:37,390 --> 00:49:38,900
So the baby's watching
all this cool

853
00:49:38,900 --> 00:49:39,860
stuff happening here.

854
00:49:39,860 --> 00:49:42,340
There's little babies
watching this stuff.

855
00:49:42,340 --> 00:49:50,850
Then I take Nemo or whatever,
my little plush Nemo, and I

856
00:49:50,850 --> 00:49:54,440
stuff him in the tube.

857
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:57,200
You with me so far babies?

858
00:49:57,200 --> 00:50:12,760
Now, I reach into the tube
and I pull out the fish.

859
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:16,690
And you, being good babies,
stare at this.

860
00:50:16,690 --> 00:50:21,260
You say this is weird stuff
because I saw the

861
00:50:21,260 --> 00:50:23,330
duck go in first --

862
00:50:23,330 --> 00:50:26,540
this is not quite Spelke's
experiment.

863
00:50:26,540 --> 00:50:28,680
I realize I'm getting the
methods a little screwed up

864
00:50:28,680 --> 00:50:30,440
but the principle is right.

865
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:33,830
I saw the duck go in, then
the fish went in, and

866
00:50:33,830 --> 00:50:35,800
I know about objects.

867
00:50:35,800 --> 00:50:39,040
Objects do not interpenetrate.

868
00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:43,020
Objects are solid things.

869
00:50:43,020 --> 00:50:48,050
If the fish is out here,
where'd the duck go?

870
00:50:48,050 --> 00:50:50,390
Spelke's done a series of
experiments like this that

871
00:50:50,390 --> 00:50:55,290
suggest that kids know about
object -- babies, young

872
00:50:55,290 --> 00:50:58,470
babies, as early as you can
successfully test them, so

873
00:50:58,470 --> 00:51:02,440
getting very close to being at
the starting point -- know

874
00:51:02,440 --> 00:51:07,330
about objects, and know a few
things about those objects.

875
00:51:07,330 --> 00:51:10,960
Notably things like that objects
don't interpenetrate.

876
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:13,810
They don't know everything about
objects, so they don't,

877
00:51:13,810 --> 00:51:17,800
for instance, if you set up some
fish and ducky kind of

878
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:22,620
thing that violates the law of
gravity, kid doesn't care.

879
00:51:22,620 --> 00:51:23,700
They don't seem to
be particularly

880
00:51:23,700 --> 00:51:25,950
sensitive to gravity.

881
00:51:25,950 --> 00:51:29,120
Yet a two-year old in his high
chair -- two-year old in the

882
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:32,240
high chair thinks
gravity's great.

883
00:51:32,240 --> 00:51:34,930
Here's the hot dog.

884
00:51:34,930 --> 00:51:38,380
OK, so dad picks up the hot dog
and puts it back on the

885
00:51:38,380 --> 00:51:41,620
plate and the kid drops it
again, because he's a little

886
00:51:41,620 --> 00:51:44,500
scientist, right, you gotta
check that gravity is still --

887
00:51:44,500 --> 00:51:47,570
you'll get there.

888
00:51:47,570 --> 00:51:52,060
Marrah knows about gravity
but her baby doesn't

889
00:51:52,060 --> 00:51:52,810
know about it yet.

890
00:51:52,810 --> 00:51:55,356
Her baby looks at gravity
demonstrations and says this

891
00:51:55,356 --> 00:51:56,160
is really boring.

892
00:51:56,160 --> 00:52:01,340
But her baby knows that
the fish cannot

893
00:52:01,340 --> 00:52:03,050
go through the duck.

894
00:52:03,050 --> 00:52:07,690
It just would be bad
news for the duck.

895
00:52:07,690 --> 00:52:09,390
Babies don't care about
inertia either.

896
00:52:09,390 --> 00:52:12,510
Things like object in motion
continue in motion unless

897
00:52:12,510 --> 00:52:13,700
acted on by--.

898
00:52:13,700 --> 00:52:16,450
Tell that to a baby, the
baby says yeah, right.

899
00:52:16,450 --> 00:52:17,540
Don't care about that.

900
00:52:17,540 --> 00:52:22,010
But I know that that fish does
not go through the duck.

901
00:52:22,010 --> 00:52:24,290
So that's this notion
of objects.

902
00:52:24,290 --> 00:52:25,320
What about essence?

903
00:52:25,320 --> 00:52:32,100
Well essence is harder to get
to in early childhood.

904
00:52:32,100 --> 00:52:34,460
It's harder to ask the
question, but by the

905
00:52:34,460 --> 00:52:39,350
time you get to --

906
00:52:39,350 --> 00:52:42,840
how old are we in this
experiment -- you're like two

907
00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:45,930
or three years old, but you're
doing something like this.

908
00:52:45,930 --> 00:52:53,570
You take the duck and you say
see this duck, what we're

909
00:52:53,570 --> 00:52:55,980
going to do is we're going to
do an operation on the duck.

910
00:52:55,980 --> 00:52:58,030
I promise it's not going
to hurt the duck.

911
00:52:58,030 --> 00:53:00,310
But we're going to take off his
skin and we're going to

912
00:53:00,310 --> 00:53:03,110
put raccoon skin on him.

913
00:53:03,110 --> 00:53:05,520
He's going to look just
like a raccoon.

914
00:53:11,350 --> 00:53:15,280
OK, is this a duck
or a raccoon?

915
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:17,100
As soon as the kid can
meaningfully answer the

916
00:53:17,100 --> 00:53:20,050
question for you, to kid
will say that's a duck.

917
00:53:20,050 --> 00:53:23,050
I mean you dressed him up like
a raccoon but he's a duck.

918
00:53:23,050 --> 00:53:25,980
Inside he's got duck essence
-- he doesn't say anything

919
00:53:25,980 --> 00:53:29,360
about duck essence, but he knows
that there's a core of

920
00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:32,590
duckness that is not dependent
on looking

921
00:53:32,590 --> 00:53:34,120
exactly like a duck.

922
00:53:40,180 --> 00:53:43,590
How many of you are
familiar with the

923
00:53:43,590 --> 00:53:47,590
classic Pepe Le Pew cartoons?

924
00:53:47,590 --> 00:53:49,300
Yeah, it's Cartoon
Network stuff.

925
00:53:49,300 --> 00:53:51,060
The basic plot, there's a whole
bunch of these, but the

926
00:53:51,060 --> 00:53:52,910
basic plot is always the same.

927
00:53:52,910 --> 00:54:01,360
Pepe Le Pew is a French skunk,
a French lover skunk.

928
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:07,080
And this cat, female cat, gets
a white stripe down her back

929
00:54:07,080 --> 00:54:10,980
by some paint or something like
that and Pepe spends the

930
00:54:10,980 --> 00:54:14,540
next five minutes of the cartoon
chasing her around

931
00:54:14,540 --> 00:54:17,120
trying to get her to fall in
love and she doesn't want to

932
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:19,920
fall in love because she knows
he's a skunk and she knows

933
00:54:19,920 --> 00:54:20,950
that she's not a skunk.

934
00:54:20,950 --> 00:54:23,690
What's funny about this, the
reason this is funny for

935
00:54:23,690 --> 00:54:28,470
little kids, is that little kids
know that the fact that

936
00:54:28,470 --> 00:54:30,450
she's got a white stripe
down her doesn't

937
00:54:30,450 --> 00:54:32,400
make her into a skunk.

938
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:36,890
She's still a cat who happens to
look like a skunk and isn't

939
00:54:36,890 --> 00:54:40,160
that funny because the skunk
is chasing around after her

940
00:54:40,160 --> 00:54:42,610
and getting hit in the head with
bats and stuff like that,

941
00:54:42,610 --> 00:54:46,050
and all the good things that
happen in cartoons.

942
00:54:46,050 --> 00:54:50,580
So, not only do kids know that
things have an essence like

943
00:54:50,580 --> 00:54:55,170
that, they are also, to be a
little recursive here, they're

944
00:54:55,170 --> 00:54:58,170
innate nativists it appears.

945
00:54:58,170 --> 00:55:01,440
They believe that these
properties came with the

946
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:03,040
system and were not learned.

947
00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:07,170
So, Susan Gelman did a clever
experiment where what she did

948
00:55:07,170 --> 00:55:13,480
was she said, see
this kangaroo?

949
00:55:13,480 --> 00:55:17,460
Take this kangaroo -- this is
a baby kangaroo, it's a

950
00:55:17,460 --> 00:55:21,310
newborn kangaroo, and you know
what we're going to do, we're

951
00:55:21,310 --> 00:55:23,900
going to take care her and we're
going to give her to the

952
00:55:23,900 --> 00:55:30,480
goats and she's going to get
raised by the goats.

953
00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:32,960
Now she's all grown up.

954
00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:35,890
Let me ask you a few questions
about her.

955
00:55:35,890 --> 00:55:38,320
Does she have a pouch?

956
00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:41,380
Well, yeah sure, that's pretty
straightforward.

957
00:55:41,380 --> 00:55:42,530
That's not the interesting
question.

958
00:55:42,530 --> 00:55:45,780
The interesting question
is is she going to

959
00:55:45,780 --> 00:55:49,920
be hopper or a climber?

960
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:54,170
And little kids -- two, three
year old kids will say it's

961
00:55:54,170 --> 00:55:57,200
going to be a hopper.

962
00:56:01,310 --> 00:56:05,080
It was a kangaroo at birth,
kangaroo's hop.

963
00:56:05,080 --> 00:56:06,630
It's part of their essence.

964
00:56:06,630 --> 00:56:13,730
The fact that she lived with
the goats isn't going to

965
00:56:13,730 --> 00:56:15,390
change that.

966
00:56:15,390 --> 00:56:20,490
This is the amusement
value of the Disney

967
00:56:20,490 --> 00:56:22,910
Tarzan cartoon, right.

968
00:56:22,910 --> 00:56:26,280
Tarzan gets raised
by the gorillas.

969
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:29,000
Have you seen that?

970
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:30,300
Oh man, when did
that come out?

971
00:56:33,230 --> 00:56:36,490
I got to calibrate my
Disneyness here.

972
00:56:36,490 --> 00:56:39,390
Which Disney movies came out
when you were of an age to

973
00:56:39,390 --> 00:56:40,750
watch them?

974
00:56:40,750 --> 00:56:42,730
AUDIENCE: Alladin.

975
00:56:42,730 --> 00:56:43,320
PROFESSOR: Alladin.

976
00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:46,430
Oh, you were too old when
Tarzan came out.

977
00:56:49,770 --> 00:56:54,230
You're the Alladin cohort.

978
00:56:54,230 --> 00:56:56,730
Jungle Book came out
when I was a kid.

979
00:56:56,730 --> 00:56:59,050
Well, no not quite.

980
00:57:02,250 --> 00:57:04,490
The ones that came out when I
was a kid were things like

981
00:57:04,490 --> 00:57:08,590
Sword and the Stone, I thought
that was great.

982
00:57:08,590 --> 00:57:10,190
That was good stuff.

983
00:57:10,190 --> 00:57:13,490
And don't claim that I was a kid
when Snow White came out

984
00:57:13,490 --> 00:57:14,930
-- that was my father.

985
00:57:17,580 --> 00:57:26,140
So, Jungle Book works, right,
and you get raised by the wild

986
00:57:26,140 --> 00:57:29,530
animals, but you're essentially
a human and that

987
00:57:29,530 --> 00:57:35,240
eventually catches
up with you.

988
00:57:35,240 --> 00:57:42,370
Actually, kids are incorrect
nativists because they believe

989
00:57:42,370 --> 00:57:44,440
things that turn out -- and it's
true that the kangaroo

990
00:57:44,440 --> 00:57:50,890
will probably hop even if it
gets raised by a goat.

991
00:57:50,890 --> 00:57:57,860
But suppose we have here a
Chinese baby and we take this

992
00:57:57,860 --> 00:58:03,410
Chinese baby and we bring it to
the United States and it's

993
00:58:03,410 --> 00:58:06,690
raised in California.

994
00:58:09,250 --> 00:58:14,480
When that kid grows up, will she
be able to speak Chinese?

995
00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:15,580
It depends on the--.

996
00:58:15,580 --> 00:58:15,870
What?

997
00:58:15,870 --> 00:58:17,120
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

998
00:58:19,700 --> 00:58:21,080
PROFESSOR: It depends
on the neighborhood.

999
00:58:21,080 --> 00:58:27,160
But kids aren't quite clear on
these demographic issues in

1000
00:58:27,160 --> 00:58:27,820
the same way.

1001
00:58:27,820 --> 00:58:33,610
But a little kid will figure
incorrectly that language is

1002
00:58:33,610 --> 00:58:35,690
one of these essential
properties.

1003
00:58:35,690 --> 00:58:38,590
That if you're Chinese, that
means you can speak -- you

1004
00:58:38,590 --> 00:58:39,830
might be able to speak
English, too.

1005
00:58:39,830 --> 00:58:41,760
You could learn that, they
can figure that out.

1006
00:58:41,760 --> 00:58:46,040
But you'd have a privileged
ability to speak Chinese

1007
00:58:46,040 --> 00:58:50,080
because after all, you were
a Chinese kid and

1008
00:58:50,080 --> 00:58:51,950
that ought to work.

1009
00:58:51,950 --> 00:58:56,800
If you're a Chinese kids who
grew up in an Anglo linguistic

1010
00:58:56,800 --> 00:58:58,340
environment, you may have
discovered that there were

1011
00:58:58,340 --> 00:59:00,360
plenty of your relatives who
also thought you should be

1012
00:59:00,360 --> 00:59:04,490
able to speak Chinese, but
that's a different issue.

1013
00:59:04,490 --> 00:59:09,860
In any case, little kids start
certainly with the notion of

1014
00:59:09,860 --> 00:59:15,930
objectness and probably quite
early with the notion that

1015
00:59:15,930 --> 00:59:19,820
objects have essences, and then
they bild on that in this

1016
00:59:19,820 --> 00:59:26,220
little scientist kind of a way
to get closer and closer to

1017
00:59:26,220 --> 00:59:29,410
what we consider to be the adult
concept of whatever,

1018
00:59:29,410 --> 00:59:37,720
alive or kangaroo or any of
those sorts of things.

1019
00:59:37,720 --> 00:59:40,000
Here's the case where the
adult state is not

1020
00:59:40,000 --> 00:59:46,370
particularly fixed, but we're
nevertheless, what you're

1021
00:59:46,370 --> 00:59:49,410
doing is you're elaborating
on juvenile concepts, not

1022
00:59:49,410 --> 00:59:51,890
suddenly discovering the notion
that there is such a

1023
00:59:51,890 --> 00:59:54,280
thing as a concept.

1024
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:58,540
OK, I want to do egocentrism
still, but I will start doing

1025
00:59:58,540 --> 00:59:59,950
that when that thing
says 3:10.

1026
00:59:59,950 --> 01:03:16,520
BREAK IN LECTURE

1027
01:03:16,520 --> 01:03:18,800
Let us talk about egocentrism.

1028
01:03:18,800 --> 01:03:25,740
So, you will recall that the
basic problem here was that

1029
01:03:25,740 --> 01:03:29,560
the kid seemed unable to take
the point of view of another,

1030
01:03:29,560 --> 01:03:32,710
in this case, the mother on the
other side of this table.

1031
01:03:32,710 --> 01:03:38,620
The kid asked about things like
the river and the hut,

1032
01:03:38,620 --> 01:03:41,850
claimed that the mom could see
them, even though mom couldn't

1033
01:03:41,850 --> 01:03:43,520
see them, only the kid
could see them.

1034
01:03:46,350 --> 01:03:50,870
You can get kids to perform
quite well on this task if you

1035
01:03:50,870 --> 01:03:53,520
come from like Nebraska
instead of

1036
01:03:53,520 --> 01:03:55,320
coming from the Alps.

1037
01:03:55,320 --> 01:03:58,570
So, in one version of
this experiment --

1038
01:04:02,120 --> 01:04:06,800
so I think the answer is that
four year olds failed this.

1039
01:04:06,800 --> 01:04:11,160
You can get three-year olds to
be successful in an equivalent

1040
01:04:11,160 --> 01:04:16,610
task, if what you do is just
simplify the situation.

1041
01:04:16,610 --> 01:04:18,660
So there's a version of this
that may have a picture in the

1042
01:04:18,660 --> 01:04:22,400
book still, I don't remember, of
sort of a city block with a

1043
01:04:22,400 --> 01:04:26,380
car in it and a Sesame
Street character.

1044
01:04:26,380 --> 01:04:29,710
You drive Grover around the
block or something and ask

1045
01:04:29,710 --> 01:04:32,800
questions about that much
simpler situation.

1046
01:04:32,800 --> 01:04:38,100
Then the kid can successfully
answer questions from the

1047
01:04:38,100 --> 01:04:44,790
vantage point of the mother, as
if part of the issue here

1048
01:04:44,790 --> 01:04:48,410
was that the task was just
too complicated.

1049
01:04:48,410 --> 01:04:49,535
Oh, I never mentioned the M&M's

1050
01:04:49,535 --> 01:04:50,590
are under there somewhere.

1051
01:04:50,590 --> 01:04:52,360
I never mentioned well
why is that the kids

1052
01:04:52,360 --> 01:04:53,410
bombed the M&M task.

1053
01:04:53,410 --> 01:04:58,720
That seems to be an issue where
you're asking kids who

1054
01:04:58,720 --> 01:05:02,500
haven't gotten to the successful
counting stage to

1055
01:05:02,500 --> 01:05:05,100
do this and they can't do it
either with the numerosity or

1056
01:05:05,100 --> 01:05:07,490
the subitizing piece, so
they fail the task.

1057
01:05:07,490 --> 01:05:11,340
If you make the M&M task, if you
put that into either the

1058
01:05:11,340 --> 01:05:14,340
numerosity range or the
subitizing range, little kids

1059
01:05:14,340 --> 01:05:16,260
will succeed in doing
the task.

1060
01:05:16,260 --> 01:05:20,600
So if you say would you rather
have this pile with two M&Ms

1061
01:05:20,600 --> 01:05:24,010
or three M&Ms, little kids
don't bomb that.

1062
01:05:24,010 --> 01:05:27,730
They bomb five versus
six or six versus

1063
01:05:27,730 --> 01:05:29,950
eight, things like that.

1064
01:05:29,950 --> 01:05:32,300
And a similar sort of thing
seems to be going on here that

1065
01:05:32,300 --> 01:05:36,440
the task is in some fashion
a little too

1066
01:05:36,440 --> 01:05:37,700
complicated for them.

1067
01:05:37,700 --> 01:05:39,910
How far can we push this back?

1068
01:05:39,910 --> 01:05:43,536
Well, if you take two year olds,
suppose you take two

1069
01:05:43,536 --> 01:05:46,440
year olds and you give them
a pair of sunglasses.

1070
01:05:46,440 --> 01:05:49,850
Put the sunglasses on the kid,
kid looks around for a while.

1071
01:05:49,850 --> 01:05:52,620
Now we take the sunglasses, they
may have been mirrored

1072
01:05:52,620 --> 01:05:53,720
shades even.

1073
01:05:53,720 --> 01:05:59,310
Put the sunglasses on mommy and
you ask can mommy see you?

1074
01:05:59,310 --> 01:06:02,090
Well, you can't see mommy's eyes
anymore because of the

1075
01:06:02,090 --> 01:06:05,460
glasses, but the kid, even a two
year old will be able to

1076
01:06:05,460 --> 01:06:08,510
say yes, indeed mommy can see
me, even though I cannot see

1077
01:06:08,510 --> 01:06:09,420
mommy's eyes.

1078
01:06:09,420 --> 01:06:13,140
Normally, if mommy is doing
this, it's a pretty good bet

1079
01:06:13,140 --> 01:06:15,930
that mommy can't see you.

1080
01:06:15,930 --> 01:06:19,720
That's the root of a lot
of entertaining games.

1081
01:06:19,720 --> 01:06:28,150
But they can manage to solve
the problem, if it's

1082
01:06:28,150 --> 01:06:34,620
simplified to the point of
sunglasses on or off.

1083
01:06:34,620 --> 01:06:39,660
This if I can see you, can you
see me thing, you can see, as

1084
01:06:39,660 --> 01:06:44,950
you get more and more
complicated, that it takes you

1085
01:06:44,950 --> 01:06:47,140
longer and longer to solve the
more and more complicated

1086
01:06:47,140 --> 01:06:49,480
versions of it.

1087
01:06:49,480 --> 01:06:52,550
You don't remember what it was
like to be thinking when you

1088
01:06:52,550 --> 01:06:55,280
were a two year old, but you may
remember a stage later in

1089
01:06:55,280 --> 01:06:57,390
your life when it
was not clear to

1090
01:06:57,390 --> 01:07:00,370
you how mirrors worked.

1091
01:07:00,370 --> 01:07:04,970
That if a can see b, b can
see a in a mirror.

1092
01:07:04,970 --> 01:07:08,000
This is the sort of thing
that amuses early

1093
01:07:08,000 --> 01:07:10,920
school age kids often.

1094
01:07:10,920 --> 01:07:11,830
I can see around the corner.

1095
01:07:11,830 --> 01:07:14,840
I can see dad around
the corner there.

1096
01:07:14,840 --> 01:07:18,900
I bet he can't see me, and it
comes as a shock that dad can

1097
01:07:18,900 --> 01:07:22,560
see you, because the mirror kind
of works both ways, and

1098
01:07:22,560 --> 01:07:25,880
then there are more complicated
arrangements with

1099
01:07:25,880 --> 01:07:29,600
keyholes and stuff like that
where it takes even longer to

1100
01:07:29,600 --> 01:07:31,830
be able to take the point of the
person on the other side.

1101
01:07:31,830 --> 01:07:38,250
So, some aspect of this is
simply a matter of complexity.

1102
01:07:38,250 --> 01:07:42,810
In fact, Paul Bloom and his
student -- actually, I should

1103
01:07:42,810 --> 01:07:45,920
mention Paul Bloom is married
to Karen Wynn.

1104
01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:50,520
They were both TAs for this
course and are now both

1105
01:07:50,520 --> 01:07:51,270
professors at Yale.

1106
01:07:51,270 --> 01:07:54,440
Anyway, Paul works on similar
sorts of problems and talks

1107
01:07:54,440 --> 01:07:58,980
about the curse of knowledge
that shows up in adult

1108
01:07:58,980 --> 01:08:00,120
behavior, too.

1109
01:08:00,120 --> 01:08:03,970
That it's very difficult, it's
often very difficult to

1110
01:08:03,970 --> 01:08:09,400
remember that somebody else
doesn't know what you know.

1111
01:08:09,400 --> 01:08:16,290
So, it's a problem
for me teaching.

1112
01:08:16,290 --> 01:08:18,200
The things that are hardest to
teach are the things that I

1113
01:08:18,200 --> 01:08:19,320
don't know anything about.

1114
01:08:19,320 --> 01:08:20,630
That's not surprising.

1115
01:08:20,630 --> 01:08:22,890
The second hardest category
are things that I know too

1116
01:08:22,890 --> 01:08:28,550
much about, because it's hard
to remember how little you

1117
01:08:28,550 --> 01:08:29,640
know about vision.

1118
01:08:29,640 --> 01:08:33,340
How can it be that you haven't
actually spent the last 18

1119
01:08:33,340 --> 01:08:39,090
years of your life bathed
in visual phenomenology.

1120
01:08:39,090 --> 01:08:41,130
You can try using that
as an excuse on the

1121
01:08:41,130 --> 01:08:42,740
exam but forget it.

1122
01:08:42,740 --> 01:08:44,490
We'll still take
the points off.

1123
01:08:44,490 --> 01:08:47,360
That turns out to
be an example of

1124
01:08:47,360 --> 01:08:48,230
the curse of knowledge.

1125
01:08:48,230 --> 01:08:53,670
Or another example would be
if you've ever been giving

1126
01:08:53,670 --> 01:08:56,590
somebody directions while you're
sitting next to them in

1127
01:08:56,590 --> 01:09:00,040
the car, you might discover that
you go past the street

1128
01:09:00,040 --> 01:09:01,860
where they were supposed to turn
because you knew you were

1129
01:09:01,860 --> 01:09:05,220
supposed to turn there, and you
just kind of forgot that

1130
01:09:05,220 --> 01:09:07,520
they wouldn't know that and
that's why you were sitting

1131
01:09:07,520 --> 01:09:10,440
there supposedly giving
them directions.

1132
01:09:10,440 --> 01:09:14,450
It's hard, even for adults
necessarily.

1133
01:09:14,450 --> 01:09:20,610
It's hard for adults sometimes
to take the vantage point of

1134
01:09:20,610 --> 01:09:22,800
another person.

1135
01:09:22,800 --> 01:09:31,340
Now one of the great examples
of this in kid behavior, a

1136
01:09:31,340 --> 01:09:34,430
paradigm that's yielded an
awful lot of research.

1137
01:09:34,430 --> 01:09:37,240
This gives you some insight into
this, if you like this

1138
01:09:37,240 --> 01:09:40,470
curse of knowledge problem, is
what's known as the false

1139
01:09:40,470 --> 01:09:44,240
beliefs task.

1140
01:09:44,240 --> 01:09:47,780
The first false belief you need
is that this is Big Bird

1141
01:09:47,780 --> 01:09:51,100
from Sesame Street.

1142
01:09:51,100 --> 01:09:55,970
So here's how a typical
false belief task

1143
01:09:55,970 --> 01:09:59,060
experiment might work.

1144
01:09:59,060 --> 01:10:00,410
You're watching this.

1145
01:10:00,410 --> 01:10:06,340
Big Bird comes in to the
scene and he has candy.

1146
01:10:06,340 --> 01:10:13,710
He puts the candy in the
refrigerator and he goes out.

1147
01:10:17,160 --> 01:10:25,690
Now, I didn't draw Grover or
whatever, but Grover comes in,

1148
01:10:25,690 --> 01:10:30,560
takes the candy out of
the refrigerator

1149
01:10:30,560 --> 01:10:34,330
and puts in the drawer.

1150
01:10:34,330 --> 01:10:38,840
Now, Big Bird comes back in
-- he didn't see this

1151
01:10:38,840 --> 01:10:40,000
abut you saw this.

1152
01:10:40,000 --> 01:10:46,830
Big Bird comes back in and you
are asked where will Big Bird

1153
01:10:46,830 --> 01:10:49,980
look for the candy?

1154
01:10:49,980 --> 01:10:54,030
And your answer, if you're like
a four year old, is that

1155
01:10:54,030 --> 01:10:56,630
Big Bird will look
in the drawer.

1156
01:10:56,630 --> 01:11:04,970
You cannot somehow access the
fact that Big Bird thinks in

1157
01:11:04,970 --> 01:11:12,490
his brain that the candy's
in the fridge.

1158
01:11:12,490 --> 01:11:18,170
When you updated your knowledge
about the candy, you

1159
01:11:18,170 --> 01:11:22,130
updated his knowledge
about the candy,

1160
01:11:22,130 --> 01:11:25,910
too, in some fashion.

1161
01:11:25,910 --> 01:11:30,730
Now there are endless versions
of this experiment.

1162
01:11:30,730 --> 01:11:36,150
This is a task that younger
than four will fail, older

1163
01:11:36,150 --> 01:11:40,620
than four roughly will
tend to get.

1164
01:11:40,620 --> 01:11:43,290
There are endless tasks that
look at this and try to break

1165
01:11:43,290 --> 01:11:47,190
it apart, see what's going on
here in developing this

1166
01:11:47,190 --> 01:11:52,660
ability to take into account
what is in the mind of another

1167
01:11:52,660 --> 01:11:57,450
person or bird, as
the case may be.

1168
01:11:57,450 --> 01:12:00,440
This is sometimes talked about
as mind reading and is

1169
01:12:00,440 --> 01:12:03,590
sometimes described
as the major

1170
01:12:03,590 --> 01:12:05,940
social problem in autism.

1171
01:12:05,940 --> 01:12:11,580
That maybe one of the reasons
that autistic kids and adults

1172
01:12:11,580 --> 01:12:15,530
have a real problem relating
to other people is an

1173
01:12:15,530 --> 01:12:19,830
inability to understand that
other people have mental

1174
01:12:19,830 --> 01:12:27,210
states, which you have that
ability, but here, you as a

1175
01:12:27,210 --> 01:12:30,245
four year old, have failed to
manage to keep track of Big

1176
01:12:30,245 --> 01:12:31,760
Bird's mental state.

1177
01:12:31,760 --> 01:12:34,050
Let's do a variation on this.

1178
01:12:34,050 --> 01:12:37,120
So, here's a variation
where you don't see

1179
01:12:37,120 --> 01:12:38,370
that initial scene.

1180
01:12:43,160 --> 01:12:50,220
Now you are asked to guess
-- the candy is

1181
01:12:50,220 --> 01:12:53,070
either here or here.

1182
01:12:53,070 --> 01:12:58,920
Where do you think that
the candy might be?

1183
01:12:58,920 --> 01:13:01,440
Well, you say 50/50.

1184
01:13:01,440 --> 01:13:04,600
Oh, I think the candy's
in the drawer.

1185
01:13:04,600 --> 01:13:07,840
OK, now Big Bird comes in and
you're told well, you know,

1186
01:13:07,840 --> 01:13:09,800
Big Bird thinks it's
in the fridge.

1187
01:13:12,680 --> 01:13:15,470
Where's Big Bird
going to look?

1188
01:13:15,470 --> 01:13:18,760
The answer now is, even if
you're as young as three, that

1189
01:13:18,760 --> 01:13:22,080
you say Big Bird's going
to look in the fridge.

1190
01:13:22,080 --> 01:13:27,310
Your guess isn't strong enough
to overwrite your

1191
01:13:27,310 --> 01:13:29,560
understanding of what's going
on in Big Bird's head.

1192
01:13:29,560 --> 01:13:30,950
This tells you something
important.

1193
01:13:30,950 --> 01:13:37,980
This tells you immediately
that you're capable of

1194
01:13:37,980 --> 01:13:39,460
understanding something
about the contents

1195
01:13:39,460 --> 01:13:41,490
of Big Bird's head.

1196
01:13:41,490 --> 01:13:45,260
It's not a complete
blank to you.

1197
01:13:45,260 --> 01:13:50,540
Even younger than that, little
kids can see somebody playing

1198
01:13:50,540 --> 01:13:54,960
with a banana pretending it's
a phone, right, and you ask

1199
01:13:54,960 --> 01:13:59,130
does he know that it's
not a phone?

1200
01:13:59,130 --> 01:13:59,800
Yeah, yeah.

1201
01:13:59,800 --> 01:14:01,580
The two year old will tell
you, yeah, he's just

1202
01:14:01,580 --> 01:14:02,560
pretending.

1203
01:14:02,560 --> 01:14:05,690
And that you have the notion
that somebody else could

1204
01:14:05,690 --> 01:14:10,040
pretend to pretend something.

1205
01:14:10,040 --> 01:14:12,630
So again, you can push this
notion of being able to read

1206
01:14:12,630 --> 01:14:17,180
minds back earlier if
it gets simpler.

1207
01:14:17,180 --> 01:14:21,770
And maybe this isn't really
about the contents of Big

1208
01:14:21,770 --> 01:14:23,630
Bird's mind it all.

1209
01:14:23,630 --> 01:14:26,110
Here's a cute version of the
experiment done by Debbie

1210
01:14:26,110 --> 01:14:26,740
[? Zicheck ?]

1211
01:14:26,740 --> 01:14:28,270
once upon a time.

1212
01:14:28,270 --> 01:14:33,630
Big Bird comes in, it's the
original false belief game.

1213
01:14:33,630 --> 01:14:37,390
big Bird comes in, puts the
candy in the fridge, but this

1214
01:14:37,390 --> 01:14:42,240
time Big Bird takes out his
camera and he photographs it.

1215
01:14:42,240 --> 01:14:48,760
He's got a picture of it.

1216
01:14:48,760 --> 01:14:51,610
There's the candy
in the fridge.

1217
01:14:51,610 --> 01:14:58,300
Now, Big Bird goes out and
Grover comes in, moves the

1218
01:14:58,300 --> 01:15:00,770
candy to the drawer, you
now know that the

1219
01:15:00,770 --> 01:15:02,130
candy is in the drawer.

1220
01:15:02,130 --> 01:15:05,305
Big Bird comes in, you are asked
where's Big Bird going

1221
01:15:05,305 --> 01:15:07,940
to look for the candy?

1222
01:15:07,940 --> 01:15:11,260
Even though Big Bird has taken
a picture of it, even though

1223
01:15:11,260 --> 01:15:15,300
there's now a physical
instantiation of the contents

1224
01:15:15,300 --> 01:15:18,200
of Big Bird's mind, you still
say it's in the drawer.

1225
01:15:18,200 --> 01:15:20,370
You as a four year old
are still unable to

1226
01:15:20,370 --> 01:15:22,310
keep track of this.

1227
01:15:22,310 --> 01:15:26,010
This suggests that maybe the
problem is less with your

1228
01:15:26,010 --> 01:15:30,600
ability to see into somebody
else's mind, and more with

1229
01:15:30,600 --> 01:15:34,150
something like the capacity
of your working memory.

1230
01:15:34,150 --> 01:15:36,420
So, if you think about it
this is very parallel to

1231
01:15:36,420 --> 01:15:37,050
[? Lofta's ?]

1232
01:15:37,050 --> 01:15:38,740
experiment I talked
about either last

1233
01:15:38,740 --> 01:15:40,170
time or the time before.

1234
01:15:40,170 --> 01:15:42,560
You see somebody go through
a yield sign.

1235
01:15:42,560 --> 01:15:47,990
You later hear that it was a
stop sign, and you believe,

1236
01:15:47,990 --> 01:15:50,460
you come to have a false memory
or a false belief, if

1237
01:15:50,460 --> 01:15:53,800
you like, that it really was
a stop sign, because we've

1238
01:15:53,800 --> 01:15:57,910
managed to somehow overwrite
your memory here.

1239
01:15:57,910 --> 01:16:02,560
Maybe in this case what you're
dealing with is not a

1240
01:16:02,560 --> 01:16:05,780
qualitative change where you're
seeing a change in the

1241
01:16:05,780 --> 01:16:09,250
ability to see into somebody
else's mind, but a big enough

1242
01:16:09,250 --> 01:16:13,150
working memory that you can
keep track of the task.

1243
01:16:13,150 --> 01:16:19,840
So, another case where the
development here waits on the

1244
01:16:19,840 --> 01:16:23,410
development of another ability,
a separate ability in

1245
01:16:23,410 --> 01:16:26,080
this case, working memory.

1246
01:16:26,080 --> 01:16:29,310
OK, that's as good a place
to stop as any.