(Press-News.org) Children too young to know words like “impossible” and “improbable” nonetheless understand how possibility works, finds new work with two- and three-year-olds.
The findings, the first to demonstrate that young children distinguish between improbable and impossible events, and learn significantly better after impossible occurrences, is newly published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Even young toddlers already think about the world in terms of possibilities,” said co-author Lisa Feigenson, co-director of the Johns Hopkins University Laboratory for Child Development. “Adults do this all the time and here we wanted to know whether even toddlers think about possible states of the world before they’ve had years of experience and before they have the language to describe these mental states.”
Adults consider possibilities daily. Rain likely? Best bring an umbrella. If I buy a lottery ticket will I win? Probably not. But it wasn’t known if toddlers also practice that mental judgement or if it emerges with age and experience.
Two- and three-year-old children were shown a gumball-type machine filled with toys. Some kids saw a mix of pink and purple toys. Others saw the machine was filled with only purple toys. Children then got a coin to drop into the machine to draw one toy.
The kids who saw that a mix of pink and purple toys was available and drew a pink one shouldn’t have been surprised since even if there weren’t that many pink ones—and even if there was only one pink one—there was some chance they’d get a pink toy. But some kids who saw the machine filled with only purple toys got a pink—which shouldn’t have been possible.
After they got their toys, all of the children were told the name of the toy—a made-up word—and then asked the name a short while later. Kids who experienced the impossible scenario and drew a pink toy when the machine contained no pink toys, learned significantly better than everyone else. But as long as getting a pink toy was possible, no matter how unlikely, kids experienced no boost to their learning.
“One possibility was that they would learn well from the improbable events, but even better from the impossible events,” said co-author Aimee Stahl, a former doctoral student in Feigenson’s lab who is now an associate professor of Psychology at The College of New Jersey. “But what we found was that they actually don’t learn from the unlikely, improbable events. They only learn if they experienced the impossible event.”
Feigenson and Stahl believe toddlers learn so much better after impossible events because the unexpected drives them to search for explanations. Improbable events might be surprising, but they don’t necessarily need any explanation. Impossible events require kids to reevaluate what they thought they knew.
“These results are so interesting because they show that when children see events in the world that they can't explain, it instills in them a drive for information that they can use to reconcile their prior model of the world with what they've just seen,” Feigenson said. “Scientifically, these findings are exciting because they suggest that humans are equipped from the get-go to think about whether things are possible or unlikely or just can’t happen.”
Next the researchers plan to study how this drive for explanations can be harnessed in the classroom. The findings suggest parents and teachers can create these heightened learning moments for kids.
“Parents and educators can create opportunities for children to really puzzle over something they find mysterious to offer a really powerful moment for learning to occur,” Feigenson said.
END
Toddlers understand concept of possibility
2024-11-04
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Small reductions to meat production in wealthier countries may help fight climate change, new analysis concludes
2024-11-04
Scientists and environmental activists have consistently called for drastic reductions in meat production as a way to reduce emissions and, in doing so, combat climate change. However, a new analysis concludes that a smaller reduction, borne by wealthier nations, could remove 125 billion tons of carbon dioxide—exceeding the total number of global fossil fuel emissions over the past three years—from the atmosphere.
Small cutbacks in higher-income countries—approximately 13% of total production—would reduce the amount of land needed for cattle grazing, the researchers note, allowing forests to naturally ...
Scientists determine why some patients don’t respond well to wet macular degeneration treatment, show how new experimental drug can bridge gap
2024-11-04
**EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL NOV. 4 AT 3:00 P.M. EST**
A new study from researchers at Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Medicine explains not only why some patients with wet age-related macular degeneration (or “wet” AMD) fail to have vision improvement with treatment, but also how an experimental drug could be used with existing wet AMD treatments to save vision.
Wet AMD, one of two kinds of AMD, is a progressive eye condition caused by an overgrowth of blood vessels in the retina, the light-sensing tissue in ...
Did the world's best-preserved dinosaurs really die in 'Pompeii-type' events?
2024-11-04
Between about 120 million and 130 million years ago, during the age of dinosaurs, temperate forests and lakes hosted a lively ecosystem in what is now northeast China. Diverse fossils from that time remained pretty much undisturbed until the 1980s, when villagers started finding exceptionally preserved creatures, which fetched high prices from collectors and museums. This started a fossil gold rush. Both locals and scientists have now dug so much, their work can be seen from space―perhaps the most extensive paleontological excavations anywhere.
By the 1990s, it was clear that the so-called Yixian ...
Not the usual suspects: Novel genetic basis of pest resistance to biotech crops
2024-11-04
If left unchecked, insect pests can devastate crops. To minimize damage and reduce the need for insecticide sprays, crops have been genetically engineered to produce bacterial proteins that kill key pests but are not harmful to people or wildlife. However, widespread planting of such transgenic crops has led to rapid adaptation by some pests. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals a novel genetic basis of resistance to transgenic crops in one of the most important crop pests in the United States.
Researchers from the University of Arizona Department of Entomology in the College of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences used genomics to investigate the ...
Jill Tarter to receive Inaugural Tarter Award for Innovation in the search for life beyond earth
2024-11-04
Jill Tarter to Receive Inaugural Tarter Award for Innovation in the Search for Life Beyond Earth
November 4, 2024, Mountain View, CA – Renowned astronomer, Dr. Jill Tarter, SETI Institute co-founder and pioneering SETI researcher, will be honored with the inaugural Tarter Award for Innovation in the Search for Life Beyond Earth at the SETI Institute’s 40th Anniversary celebration on November 20, 2024, in Menlo Park, CA. This new award recognizes individuals whose projects or ideas significantly advance humanity’s search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence. The Tarter Award honors contributions ...
Survey finds continued declines in HIV clinician workforce
2024-11-04
November 4, 2024 — The supply of healthcare professionals available to provide HIV care continues to decline, even as the need for HIV care and prevention is expected to increase, reports a survey study in the November/December issue of The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (JANAC). The official journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, JANAC is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.
"Our study provides new insights into the numbers and characteristics of clinicians who will be available to provide HIV care in the coming years. This information ...
Researchers home in on tumor vulnerabilities to improve odds of treating glioblastoma
2024-11-04
A team led by researchers at the University of Toronto has uncovered new targets that could be the key to effectively treating glioblastoma, a lethal type of brain cancer. These targets were identified through a screen for genetic vulnerabilities in patient-derived cancer stem cells that represent the variability found in tumours.
Glioblastoma is the most common type of brain cancer in adults. It is also the most challenging to treat due to the resistance of glioblastoma cancer stem cells, from which tumours grow, to therapy. Cancer stem cells that survive after a tumour is treated go on to form new tumours that do not respond to further treatment.
“Glioblastoma tumors have ...
Awareness of lung cancer screening remains low
2024-11-04
There is a lung cancer screening test that is saving lives – and yet most people who could be getting the test have never heard of it or never talked about it with a doctor.
“We’ve got a screening test that works. It works as well, if not better, than breast and colorectal cancer screening in terms of mortality reduction. It's one of the most life-saving things we have for a cancer that kills more people than either of those two combined,” said lung cancer pulmonologist Gerard Silvestri, M.D. And yet, he said, “Eighty percent of those eligible for this screening, regardless of race, education, ethnicity, health or income, hadn’t heard of or ...
Hospital COVID-19 burden and adverse event rates
2024-11-04
About The Study: In this cohort study of hospital admissions among Medicare patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, greater hospital COVID-19 burden was associated with an increased risk of in-hospital adverse effects among both patients with and without COVID-19. These results illustrate the need for greater hospital resilience and surge capacity to prevent declines in patient safety during surges in demand.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Mark L. Metersky, MD, email metersky@uchc.edu.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.42936)
Editor’s ...
NSF NOIRLab astronomers discover the fastest-feeding black hole in the early universe
2024-11-04
Supermassive black holes exist at the center of most galaxies, and modern telescopes continue to observe them at surprisingly early times in the Universe’s evolution. It’s difficult to understand how these black holes were able to grow so big so rapidly. But with the discovery of a low-mass supermassive black hole feasting on material at an extreme rate, seen just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, astronomers now have valuable new insights into the mechanisms of rapidly growing black holes in the early Universe.
LID-568 was discovered ...