Comments for The Hello Felix Child Development Blog http://www.hellofelix.com/blog A trustworthy resource for parents interested in understanding more about how children think, learn, and grow. Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:21:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.1 Comment on Chimps Outsmarting Children - Or Not? Possible Explanations for Overimitation by Eli http://www.hellofelix.com/blog/2007/11/22/chimps-outsmarting-children-or-not/#comment-42 Eli Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:28:21 +0000 http://www.hellofelix.com/blog/2007/11/22/chimps-outsmarting-children-or-not/#comment-42 Saw your work on PBS last night. I truly hope this will help parents and teachers move one step closer to 'research based education' and perhaps take a step back from the outdated thinking that has dominated the educational and parenting communities. As a lecturer and child therapist, I always preface my talks by saying that I am not giving my oppinion, but merely reporting what researchers have found to be scientifically proven about children and how they learn (or in this case, dont learn). Keep up the good work, I will be checking back vey often. Question: When I cite material from your research, is it enough that I mention your name, university and website? Are there others whom I should credit? Saw your work on PBS last night. I truly hope this will help parents and teachers move one step closer to ‘research based education’ and perhaps take a step back from the outdated thinking that has dominated the educational and parenting communities. As a lecturer and child therapist, I always preface my talks by saying that I am not giving my oppinion, but merely reporting what researchers have found to be scientifically proven about children and how they learn (or in this case, dont learn).
Keep up the good work, I will be checking back vey often.
Question: When I cite material from your research, is it enough that I mention your name, university and website? Are there others whom I should credit?

]]> Comment on Chimps Outsmarting Children - Or Not? Possible Explanations for Overimitation by Idetrorce http://www.hellofelix.com/blog/2007/11/22/chimps-outsmarting-children-or-not/#comment-9 Idetrorce Sat, 15 Dec 2007 21:43:20 +0000 http://www.hellofelix.com/blog/2007/11/22/chimps-outsmarting-children-or-not/#comment-9 very interesting, but I don't agree with you Idetrorce very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce

]]> Comment on When it Comes to Overimitation, Adults Don’t Have the Last Laugh by Anders Aspnäs http://www.hellofelix.com/blog/2007/12/07/adults-dont-have-last-laugh-on-overimitation/#comment-7 Anders Aspnäs Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:39:10 +0000 http://www.hellofelix.com/blog/2007/12/07/adults-dont-have-last-laugh-on-overimitation/#comment-7 Hi there, intriguing subject, great work, enjoy your site. I agree that ability to imitate is an important aspect of human nature. Clearly it does not pay off to be skeptic when trying to imitate when trying to obtain others knowledge. I also tend to think it is easy to find examples from IT and technology partly because it is a situation where adults need to engage in a learning activity as you showed with the puzzles. The level of complexity and degrees of freedom when dealing with a computer program also match that of a puzzle presented to children. There are many ways of getting result you are after, but many more ways where you will end up with an error. I guess one of the reasons why overimitation occurs is that even though there are extra tasks being performed they don't generally add much to the over all expense of learning how to solve the puzzle in comparison to the value of the reward. Getting things done in a way that is known to work is probably evaluated to be better than any experimental way where the outcome is uncertain. What i find most interesting is that overimitation could explain, at least partly, why irrelevant behavior in IT spread simply by being copied and why this kind of erratic behavior does not seem to be going away. Your research also opens up questions in regards to overimitation, ability to think in a skeptical way and learning. Who knows what we still have to learn about learning. Hi there, intriguing subject, great work, enjoy your site.

I agree that ability to imitate is an important aspect of human nature. Clearly it does not pay off to be skeptic when trying to imitate when trying to obtain others knowledge.

I also tend to think it is easy to find examples from IT and technology partly because it is a situation where adults need to engage in a learning activity as you showed with the puzzles. The level of complexity and degrees of freedom when dealing with a computer program also match that of a puzzle presented to children. There are many ways of getting result you are after, but many more ways where you will end up with an error.

I guess one of the reasons why overimitation occurs is that even though there are extra tasks being performed they don’t generally add much to the over all expense of learning how to solve the puzzle in comparison to the value of the reward. Getting things done in a way that is known to work is probably evaluated to be better than any experimental way where the outcome is uncertain.

What i find most interesting is that overimitation could explain, at least partly, why irrelevant behavior in IT spread simply by being copied and why this kind of erratic behavior does not seem to be going away.
Your research also opens up questions in regards to overimitation, ability to think in a skeptical way and learning. Who knows what we still have to learn about learning.

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