This is the fifth section of an unpublished paper discussing critical thinking issues and the teaxhing of child development.
Problems in the Classroom: Critical or Uncritical Thinking?
We have considered what developmental issues and what experiences may make it difficult for undergraduate students of child development to think critically. It is unpleasant but important to ask whether there are also factors in coursework that encourage uncritical thinking about development and discourage critical thinking.
Coursework and Assessment
One possible factor has to do with the types of assignments and particularly of assessment approaches used by instructors. Unless they are carefully discussed and analyzed at some later time, multiple-choice tests do little to encourage critical thinking; even though very good multiple-choice examinations may require the instructor to think analytically, they do not have the same effect on students. Essay assignments and examinations have a far greater potential for revealing student thinking patterns and providing opportunities for encouraging critical thinking, but this potential is realized only if instructors devote themselves to providing feedback—and, of course, if students pay attention to it. Small classes may offer opportunities for oral discussion with critical thought about evidence and reasoning, but instructors may find appropriate responses difficult, and students may resent having their thinking dissected in public. Instructors can model critical thinking by commenting at length on issues, but of course this takes away time from “covering” other points. All the solutions available to instructors involve trade-offs between encouragement of critical thinking and the achievement of other goals for the class.
Trouble with Textbooks
In addition to instruction, discussion, and assessment methods, faculty members have some choice of textbooks for developmental science courses, but there are some serious difficulties involving these books. Almost all of them are beautifully produced, colorful and interesting to look at, and engagingly written, with many vignettes about specific children and rich description of some events in development. They are loaded with “features”, boxes discussing research issues, thought questions of various kinds, and attempts to engage the student by raising questions about real-world applications. Regrettably, however, many of them provide no more impetus for critical thinking than did the high-school assignments discussed by Francine Prose.
I have chosen some quotations from a very popular textbook which had best be nameless, especially because it is really no worse than its competitors. As the reader will see, both statements and questions fail to use or trigger critical thinking skills.
“…theories have contributed to new approaches to education that emphasize exploration, discovery, and collaboration. As a result, children express greater enthusiasm for learning.” [No information in the chapter supports the latter claim, or suggests how enthusiasm would be measured or whether it is associated with actual learning.]
“Cite an aspect of your development that differs from a parent’s or grandparent’s when he or she was your age. How might contexts explain this difference?” [Nothing in the question or the chapter directs the student to ways to measure aspects of development, or comments on effects of memory on the older person’s presentation of his or her past. In fact, the student is not asked to get information from an older person. The first part of the assignment is irrelevant to the second, which basically asks for some contextual factors and effects they might (not do) have.]
“Find out if your parents read Gesell, Spock, or other parenting advice books when you were growing up. What questions… most concerned them? Do you think that today’s parents have concerns that differ from those of your parents? Explain.” [Whether the parents read advice books is irrelevant to the questions that concerned them, so this aspect distracts from a critical approach ; the question does not guide the student to ways to find what concerns today’s parents have, so he or she is asked to respond without sufficient supportive information; the student is unlikely to have an informed opinion on this point unless he or she is a parent, so the question further encourages uncritical thinking without sufficient information.]
“What aspect of behaviorism made it attractive to critics of psychoanalytic theory? How did Piaget’s theory respond to a major limitation of behaviorism?” [The student is asked to work with insufficient information. The text does not state that either assumption is true. In addition, to ask how Piaget’s theory “responded” to an aspect of behaviorism suggests that the theory was shaped by shortcomings of behaviorism, which is not correct and tends to confuse the student’s attempt to compare behaviorism and other theories. This language may simply be an ill-advised attempt to avoid saying “Compare and contrast”.]
“Return to [the] table… which lists advantages and disadvantages of parenthood. Which are most important and which least important to you? What is your ideal family size?” [Other than the use of the table, this question appeals only to the student’s personal views and does not involve the weighing of evidence or other critical thinking skills. There is little connection between the question and information about development. In addition, neither the student nor the instructor can use a response to this question to determine whether the student understands relevant information or has given a considered answer.]
“____, who is expecting her first child, recalls her own mother as cold and distant. ___ is worried about whether she will be effective at caring for her new baby. What factors during pregnancy are related to maternal behavior?” [The details about ____ are irrelevant to the question, and potentially distract students into answering in terms of relationships they have experienced. In addition, the question cannot be answered on the basis of any information in the related chapter, which refers to maternal attitudes but not maternal behavior.]
“Which explanation of infants’ cognitive competencies do you prefer, and why?” [This question is couched in terms of personal preferences, not of evaluation of evidence or logic. A student who reads closely may be tempted to say “I like this one because the words are easier to spell”, but most will simply search the text for the right answer.]
“Do you believe that teaching infants and toddlers to control the expression of negative emotion is very important? Explain.” [This question asks the student to state a personal value (very important), without explaining either the goal of the training, what it would mean for the training not to be very important, or whether control means suppression of emotion or regulation of modes of expression. Once again, the ambiguity of the question encourages an uncritical response.]
Finally, the frequency of emotional language in this book should be noted, as it encourages an uncritical approach by providing irrelevant details and distracting the student from the task at hand. The table of contents contains the following words: amazing, tragedy, mysterious tragedy,and powerful, none of which are necessary descriptions of the contents. Here is the caption under a picture of a toddler: “ This boy has spent his first two years in a Romanian orphanage, with little adult contact and stimulation. The longer he remains in a barren environment, the more he will withdraw and wither and display permanent impairment in all domains of development.” This vivid writing is no doubt engaging, but creates a barrier rather than a bridge between the illustration and available evidence concerning the later, non-withered, development of the Romanian orphans who have received such careful study.
Trouble with Instructors
Regrettably, it is all too easy for instructors to contribute to critical thinking problems by responses in the classroom or by assessment of essay assignments. For example, most instructors attempt to make their remarks vivid, memorable, and student-friendly by including dramatic events and descriptions of interesting but extraneous factors. Students do remember such information, and many instructors have found that answers to essay questions sometimes refer to “what you said about what your little boy did” or other personal details. However, it has been demonstrated clearly that extraneous information, however attention-getting it may be, confuses critical thinking about the real issues ( Stanovich, 2004; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974; Waldrop, 1987). To omit those interesting details seems undesirable, as they do help establish memory for concepts; however, it may be a good idea to follow such examples by reminding students about individual differences.
Instructors often permit or provide plausible, unsupported explanations of developmental events, as indeed do developmental theorists. Discriminating between the plausible explanation and the explanation supported by evidence is one of the steps in developing reasoning capacities (Kuhn, 1993). Of course, recognizing that an argument is a plausible one is an important critical thinking skill, without which the formulation of hypotheses would be extremely time-consuming, if not impossible. But recognizing that an argument is only plausible is an essential advance, without which “confident speculation” is a likely response. It is easy enough to remind students of the evidence that would be needed to support a plausible argument found in developmental science work. It is more difficult to respond to a student’s offered plausible explanation in such a way that criticism is perceived to involve the nature of all plausible arguments, rather than the acceptable plausibility of this one.
Instructors may find it quite difficult to avoid emphasizing confirmatory data over non-confirmatory, or permitting students to stress confirmatory data (Klaczynski & Narasimham, 1998). Having asked students to participate by offering examples of the developmental phenomenon under discussion, and having received one or two appropriate examples, how many of us inquire, “how many people have had completely different experiences? “ rather than simply thanking the students who have commented? Generally, instructors are happy if examples are relevant to the issue, and fail to concern themselves with the importance of counter-examples.
Instructors generally fail to give adequate attention to the examination of false statements. If a student has made the statement, the instructor politely turns to someone else for the answer, knowing that students are offended by any clear statement that they are wrong, or by any attempt to examine the reasoning behind the statement. (Even if the statement is correct, trying to explore the reasoning behind it often makes the respondent feel that he or she has made a mistake-- if it’s right, it’s right, and that’s all there is to be said.) If a false statement has appeared in the textbook or come up in media presentations, instructors often ignore, ridicule, or dismiss it, rather than modeling for students the process of examining it thoroughly. These practices play into the problematic tendency to stress what is true rather than what is false, thus creating problems in examining the consistency of a set of statements ( Johnson-Laird, Legrenzi, Girotto, & Legrenzi, 2000).
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Critical thinking and the mastery of child development concepts, Part 4
This is the fourth section of an unpublished paper on critical thinking and teaching child development.
Why Don’t Students Already Think Critically?
I will take it for granted that undergraduate students need to improve their critical thinking abilities. Although research in this area is complicated by the fact that few humans ever perfect this set of skills, so it is hard to choose a comparison group, recent work suggests that even professional psychologists with graduate training may be far less competent in critical thinking than we would like to see (Sharp, Herbert, & Redding, 2008). The remarkable difficulties shown by adults who need to ignore irrelevant information have been demonstrated for many years, beginning with the work of Tversky and Kahneman (1974). Superficial information included in a question confuses many adults (Waldrop, 1987).
What factors limit the critical thinking skills of professionals, those of other adults, and, we can assume, those of undergraduates? Some of these factors are developmental in nature, while others involve past and present instruction, intentional or otherwise.
Formal Operations and Horizontal Decalage
The study of formal operational thought by Piaget ( ) provided some important insights into critical thinking. Formal operational thinkers can create a variety of hypotheses as possible explanations for an event and can figure out experimental tests to support or reject a hypothesis. In addition, they are able to co-ordinate factors rather than having to consider each one separately, allowing them to deal with issues like rates or proportions. They can also collect data systematically and consider sources of error and the possibility that their conclusions are wrong. Without all these abilities, critical thinking would be much impeded.
Students in undergraduate child development courses are generally at least in the sophomore year of college, and the youngest are about 20 years old. The textbooks we assign them state that they have had the ability for formal operational thought for some years, and surely formal operational thought is the foundation of many critical thinking abilities. However, anyone who has attempted to teach undergraduates what formal operational thought is, must have become very aware that the students did not seem to bring formal operational abilities to the study of formal operations. Demonstrations or videos showing the use of ratios and isolation of variables are commonly met with anxious student faces, behind which are anxious minds questioning whether they themselves are able to do the tasks represented as possible for 12-year-olds.
Piaget’s concept of horizontal decalage is an important part of the explanation of apparent delays in formal operational thought. This concept suggests that cognitive abilities can appear to be less uniform than we expect, depending on the familiarity of a problem for a student. Unfamiliar material is less easily treated with formal operational or other high-level cognitive abilities than is familiar material; for example, as Burbules and Linn (1988) demonstrated, reasoning ability can be improved simply by free exploration of a situation. Characteristics of infants and children are relatively unfamiliar for most undergraduates in the United States; small families and intense age-grading have prevented them from having much opportunity to observe younger children. It would be surprising if undergraduates were able to apply critical thinking skills to child development information as they can to, say, cooking, or repairing a car.
For developmental reasons, then, it is unlikely that students in undergraduate child development courses will be able to muster formal operational skills without help or effort, and thus unlikely that they will be able to use critical thinking abilities effectively throughout the course.
The Perry Scheme
There have been relatively few discussions of cognitive changes that occur during the college years. One approach to this topic, based on a small number of students at Harvard, offers some ideas that are intriguing although somewhat speculative. The “Perry scheme” (Perry, 1970) proposed stages of undergraduate development with strong relevance to critical thinking. Perry proposed that entering freshmen tend to focus their thinking on the idea that there are right and wrong answers, known to authorities; this position is referred to as “Dualism/Received Knowledge.” Perry suggested that the initial, basic attitude is that all problems are solvable, and the student’s task is to learn the right solution. A second step in this dualistic position has to do with attitudes toward authorities. Some authorities (for example, literature professors) are seen to disagree, whereas others (like physicists) are believed by the student to agree. Those authorities who have agreement about right answers are the ones to pay attention to. (It seems doubtful that developmental scientists are considered to be among those who agree on right answers.) Critical thinking by the student is not an option.
A second position, taken by students who have passed the dualistic freshman stage, is one that acknowledges conflicting answers, but concludes that the existence of conflict means that only one’s own intuitive response is correct, and external authorities are not correct. Perry referred to this position as “Multiplicity/ Subjective Knowledge.” Students at the beginning of this position assume that there are problems whose solution is known, and others whose solution is not known; the student’s job is to find the right solutions that are known. Later, a new assumption appears: most problems have no known solution, so either everyone has a right to their own opinion, or it doesn’t matter which solution you choose, and the student’s task is to amplify on these points rather than to try to solve the problems. Critical thinking would be a waste of time, and opinions are nothing more than unexamined prejudices.
A third position described by Perry develops out of the first two. This position, called “Relativism/Procedural Knowledge”, is a step that makes critical thinking possible. It includes the idea that there are reasoning methods favored by disciplines, and that study of a discipline requires mastering these as well as amassing a supply of facts. Subjective responses are considered, but separated from techniques of objective analysis. In the initial step for this position, “Contextual Relativism”, the student acknowledges that there are reasons for all proposed solutions to problems, and that solutions need to be examined in context and relative to the type of support they have. Although solutions may be equally good, one may be better than others in a given context. The student’s job is to learn to evaluate solutions—a matter requiring critical thinking skills. Contextual Relativism would seem essential to the serious study of developmental science, an area in which multiple causes are responsible for multiple outcomes, and dynamic systems theory suggests that nonlinear relationships are common. Value-laden aspects of developmental studies also make it important that students have the understanding of subjective responses characteristic of this period of development.
“Relativism/Procedural Knowledge” is not the last step in Perry’ scheme, but it may be the lowest level that allows for mobilization of critical thinking skills, and thus the first level that permits good understanding of the complexities of developmental science. It is not clear how we can persuade or push students to arrive at this level, however, nor can we make it a prerequisite for enrollment in a child development course.
Students’ Past Experience
College students who received their secondary education in the United States have generally received some encouragement to think critically and may believe that they are accomplished at critical thinking tasks. However, examination of secondary school experiences suggests that these may diminish rather than foster critical thinking abilities. Some years ago, the novelist Francine Prose examined efforts toward critical thinking used in high school English textbooks and other assignments (Prose, 1999). In her article, aptly named “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read”, she noted a failure to require close, line-by-line reading, and a tendency to questions about social or moral implications rather than about the actual content of the novel. Prose referred to one teacher’s manual that asked students reading Huckleberry Finn to count the ways in which Mark Twain negated the humanity of the slave character Jim, rather than comparing the number of such incidents with the number in which his humanity was witnessed. Prose also noted the frequency of assignments in which questions asked were peripherally relevant to the information available to the student. For example, students might be asked what a character might do about a situation not mentioned in the book. Similarly, students might be asked to answer questions whose answers they would be unlikely to know, such as a question about the mental health prognosis of the heroine of The Bell Jar. Assignments of these types discourage a focus on relevant, available information, and encourage the view that all possible answers (if long enough) are acceptable.
College students who have experienced high school assignments of the kind Prose described are likely to feel comfortable with irrelevancies and low levels of abstraction, and even to believe that they are excellent critical thinkers because of their handling of such matters. Facing a child development course, with its demands for identification of relevant information and for evaluation of ideas and practices, such students may feel offended, even humiliated by their perceived failure to succeed with the methods they have been rewarded for.
Seductive Ideas
Kagan’s fascinating book, Three seductive ideas (2000), discussed a number of common preconceptions that interfere with understanding of psychology in general and the study of development in particular. These “seductive ideas” are broad assumptions about the nature of human beings, and when they are unrecognized or incorrectly applied, they can well create confusion about material commonly included in the teaching of developmental science.
Kagan proposed that one important “seductive idea” was abstractionism, the assumption that if two phenomena have some characteristics in common, these characteristics can be abstracted and used to reason from one phenomenon to the other. For example, as animals and human beings have certain things in common, especially in their early lives, the application of abstractionism would suggest that whatever is true about young animals can also be expected to be true about young humans. Similar reasoning can be applied to brain and mind, with the assumption that whatever is shown to be true about brain processes can also be assumed to be true about mental processes. Both of these applications of abstractionism have the potential for confusing thinking about development.
A second “seductive idea” is infant determinism. This is the assumption that in all aspects of development, early events influence outcomes more powerfully than later events. The assumption of infant determinism can cause confusion about the nature of plasticity by blurring the distinction between experience-expectant and experience-dependent plasticity, as well as by convincing students that a reliable principle makes it unnecessary for them to examine the evidence about the effects of experience.
The third major “seductive idea” mentioned by Kagan is the pleasure principle. The belief that motivation is determined by the pursuit of gratification (and, perhaps, by avoidance of discomfort) is at odds with a number of important ideas about development. For example, difficulties in teaching of Piagetian concepts are confused by student application of the pleasure principle, as students search for ways in which infants “must” be positively reinforced for cognitive developments. Similarly, the idea of mastery motivation as a general principle, and of attachment behavior as seen from an ethological viewpoint, are difficult to comprehend when the pleasure principle is a starting point for thinking.
“Folk Psychology”
Not all “seductive ideas” are broad generalizations. Some are specific beliefs, common currency of thought about development and reinforced by repetition in the media and in casual conversation. There are probably hundreds of these claims that “everybody knows” and few approach critically. Here are some examples of folk or naïve developmental psychology (Mercer, 2009):
Sugar causes hyperactivity (which is, incidentally, the same thing as hypertension).
Toddlers drop food off their high chairs because they want to make their parents mad.
Teenagers learn to be antisocial under peer pressure from bad companions.
Autism “clusters” mean that something in a local environment causes the disorder.
Breastfeeding causes a baby to become attached to her mother.
These common beliefs contradict and confuse understanding of evidence-based information about development. Addressing them directly and modeling critical thinking for students may help to lessen their potential for damage.
Mass media and other sources of information
Newspapers, television, and other media sources repeat much incorrect information which they garner from each other. This is especially true with respect to any topic which is “flavor of the month”, as is the case currently for attachment. The television program “20/20” recently presented a show which uncritically described the practice of keeping adopted children within three feet of a parent at all times, night and day, for a number of weeks. “Made for TV” movies have dramatized similar ideas. In addition, materials written for parent or child care use may be quite unreliable; for example, a pamphlet distributed to child care workers (Koralek, 1999; still in use) claimed that securely attached children will usually not be upset when dropped off at day care, and that they will smile and show interest in other people— questionable statements unless they are accompanied by information about the age and circumstances of the children.
Why Don’t Students Already Think Critically?
I will take it for granted that undergraduate students need to improve their critical thinking abilities. Although research in this area is complicated by the fact that few humans ever perfect this set of skills, so it is hard to choose a comparison group, recent work suggests that even professional psychologists with graduate training may be far less competent in critical thinking than we would like to see (Sharp, Herbert, & Redding, 2008). The remarkable difficulties shown by adults who need to ignore irrelevant information have been demonstrated for many years, beginning with the work of Tversky and Kahneman (1974). Superficial information included in a question confuses many adults (Waldrop, 1987).
What factors limit the critical thinking skills of professionals, those of other adults, and, we can assume, those of undergraduates? Some of these factors are developmental in nature, while others involve past and present instruction, intentional or otherwise.
Formal Operations and Horizontal Decalage
The study of formal operational thought by Piaget ( ) provided some important insights into critical thinking. Formal operational thinkers can create a variety of hypotheses as possible explanations for an event and can figure out experimental tests to support or reject a hypothesis. In addition, they are able to co-ordinate factors rather than having to consider each one separately, allowing them to deal with issues like rates or proportions. They can also collect data systematically and consider sources of error and the possibility that their conclusions are wrong. Without all these abilities, critical thinking would be much impeded.
Students in undergraduate child development courses are generally at least in the sophomore year of college, and the youngest are about 20 years old. The textbooks we assign them state that they have had the ability for formal operational thought for some years, and surely formal operational thought is the foundation of many critical thinking abilities. However, anyone who has attempted to teach undergraduates what formal operational thought is, must have become very aware that the students did not seem to bring formal operational abilities to the study of formal operations. Demonstrations or videos showing the use of ratios and isolation of variables are commonly met with anxious student faces, behind which are anxious minds questioning whether they themselves are able to do the tasks represented as possible for 12-year-olds.
Piaget’s concept of horizontal decalage is an important part of the explanation of apparent delays in formal operational thought. This concept suggests that cognitive abilities can appear to be less uniform than we expect, depending on the familiarity of a problem for a student. Unfamiliar material is less easily treated with formal operational or other high-level cognitive abilities than is familiar material; for example, as Burbules and Linn (1988) demonstrated, reasoning ability can be improved simply by free exploration of a situation. Characteristics of infants and children are relatively unfamiliar for most undergraduates in the United States; small families and intense age-grading have prevented them from having much opportunity to observe younger children. It would be surprising if undergraduates were able to apply critical thinking skills to child development information as they can to, say, cooking, or repairing a car.
For developmental reasons, then, it is unlikely that students in undergraduate child development courses will be able to muster formal operational skills without help or effort, and thus unlikely that they will be able to use critical thinking abilities effectively throughout the course.
The Perry Scheme
There have been relatively few discussions of cognitive changes that occur during the college years. One approach to this topic, based on a small number of students at Harvard, offers some ideas that are intriguing although somewhat speculative. The “Perry scheme” (Perry, 1970) proposed stages of undergraduate development with strong relevance to critical thinking. Perry proposed that entering freshmen tend to focus their thinking on the idea that there are right and wrong answers, known to authorities; this position is referred to as “Dualism/Received Knowledge.” Perry suggested that the initial, basic attitude is that all problems are solvable, and the student’s task is to learn the right solution. A second step in this dualistic position has to do with attitudes toward authorities. Some authorities (for example, literature professors) are seen to disagree, whereas others (like physicists) are believed by the student to agree. Those authorities who have agreement about right answers are the ones to pay attention to. (It seems doubtful that developmental scientists are considered to be among those who agree on right answers.) Critical thinking by the student is not an option.
A second position, taken by students who have passed the dualistic freshman stage, is one that acknowledges conflicting answers, but concludes that the existence of conflict means that only one’s own intuitive response is correct, and external authorities are not correct. Perry referred to this position as “Multiplicity/ Subjective Knowledge.” Students at the beginning of this position assume that there are problems whose solution is known, and others whose solution is not known; the student’s job is to find the right solutions that are known. Later, a new assumption appears: most problems have no known solution, so either everyone has a right to their own opinion, or it doesn’t matter which solution you choose, and the student’s task is to amplify on these points rather than to try to solve the problems. Critical thinking would be a waste of time, and opinions are nothing more than unexamined prejudices.
A third position described by Perry develops out of the first two. This position, called “Relativism/Procedural Knowledge”, is a step that makes critical thinking possible. It includes the idea that there are reasoning methods favored by disciplines, and that study of a discipline requires mastering these as well as amassing a supply of facts. Subjective responses are considered, but separated from techniques of objective analysis. In the initial step for this position, “Contextual Relativism”, the student acknowledges that there are reasons for all proposed solutions to problems, and that solutions need to be examined in context and relative to the type of support they have. Although solutions may be equally good, one may be better than others in a given context. The student’s job is to learn to evaluate solutions—a matter requiring critical thinking skills. Contextual Relativism would seem essential to the serious study of developmental science, an area in which multiple causes are responsible for multiple outcomes, and dynamic systems theory suggests that nonlinear relationships are common. Value-laden aspects of developmental studies also make it important that students have the understanding of subjective responses characteristic of this period of development.
“Relativism/Procedural Knowledge” is not the last step in Perry’ scheme, but it may be the lowest level that allows for mobilization of critical thinking skills, and thus the first level that permits good understanding of the complexities of developmental science. It is not clear how we can persuade or push students to arrive at this level, however, nor can we make it a prerequisite for enrollment in a child development course.
Students’ Past Experience
College students who received their secondary education in the United States have generally received some encouragement to think critically and may believe that they are accomplished at critical thinking tasks. However, examination of secondary school experiences suggests that these may diminish rather than foster critical thinking abilities. Some years ago, the novelist Francine Prose examined efforts toward critical thinking used in high school English textbooks and other assignments (Prose, 1999). In her article, aptly named “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read”, she noted a failure to require close, line-by-line reading, and a tendency to questions about social or moral implications rather than about the actual content of the novel. Prose referred to one teacher’s manual that asked students reading Huckleberry Finn to count the ways in which Mark Twain negated the humanity of the slave character Jim, rather than comparing the number of such incidents with the number in which his humanity was witnessed. Prose also noted the frequency of assignments in which questions asked were peripherally relevant to the information available to the student. For example, students might be asked what a character might do about a situation not mentioned in the book. Similarly, students might be asked to answer questions whose answers they would be unlikely to know, such as a question about the mental health prognosis of the heroine of The Bell Jar. Assignments of these types discourage a focus on relevant, available information, and encourage the view that all possible answers (if long enough) are acceptable.
College students who have experienced high school assignments of the kind Prose described are likely to feel comfortable with irrelevancies and low levels of abstraction, and even to believe that they are excellent critical thinkers because of their handling of such matters. Facing a child development course, with its demands for identification of relevant information and for evaluation of ideas and practices, such students may feel offended, even humiliated by their perceived failure to succeed with the methods they have been rewarded for.
Seductive Ideas
Kagan’s fascinating book, Three seductive ideas (2000), discussed a number of common preconceptions that interfere with understanding of psychology in general and the study of development in particular. These “seductive ideas” are broad assumptions about the nature of human beings, and when they are unrecognized or incorrectly applied, they can well create confusion about material commonly included in the teaching of developmental science.
Kagan proposed that one important “seductive idea” was abstractionism, the assumption that if two phenomena have some characteristics in common, these characteristics can be abstracted and used to reason from one phenomenon to the other. For example, as animals and human beings have certain things in common, especially in their early lives, the application of abstractionism would suggest that whatever is true about young animals can also be expected to be true about young humans. Similar reasoning can be applied to brain and mind, with the assumption that whatever is shown to be true about brain processes can also be assumed to be true about mental processes. Both of these applications of abstractionism have the potential for confusing thinking about development.
A second “seductive idea” is infant determinism. This is the assumption that in all aspects of development, early events influence outcomes more powerfully than later events. The assumption of infant determinism can cause confusion about the nature of plasticity by blurring the distinction between experience-expectant and experience-dependent plasticity, as well as by convincing students that a reliable principle makes it unnecessary for them to examine the evidence about the effects of experience.
The third major “seductive idea” mentioned by Kagan is the pleasure principle. The belief that motivation is determined by the pursuit of gratification (and, perhaps, by avoidance of discomfort) is at odds with a number of important ideas about development. For example, difficulties in teaching of Piagetian concepts are confused by student application of the pleasure principle, as students search for ways in which infants “must” be positively reinforced for cognitive developments. Similarly, the idea of mastery motivation as a general principle, and of attachment behavior as seen from an ethological viewpoint, are difficult to comprehend when the pleasure principle is a starting point for thinking.
“Folk Psychology”
Not all “seductive ideas” are broad generalizations. Some are specific beliefs, common currency of thought about development and reinforced by repetition in the media and in casual conversation. There are probably hundreds of these claims that “everybody knows” and few approach critically. Here are some examples of folk or naïve developmental psychology (Mercer, 2009):
Sugar causes hyperactivity (which is, incidentally, the same thing as hypertension).
Toddlers drop food off their high chairs because they want to make their parents mad.
Teenagers learn to be antisocial under peer pressure from bad companions.
Autism “clusters” mean that something in a local environment causes the disorder.
Breastfeeding causes a baby to become attached to her mother.
These common beliefs contradict and confuse understanding of evidence-based information about development. Addressing them directly and modeling critical thinking for students may help to lessen their potential for damage.
Mass media and other sources of information
Newspapers, television, and other media sources repeat much incorrect information which they garner from each other. This is especially true with respect to any topic which is “flavor of the month”, as is the case currently for attachment. The television program “20/20” recently presented a show which uncritically described the practice of keeping adopted children within three feet of a parent at all times, night and day, for a number of weeks. “Made for TV” movies have dramatized similar ideas. In addition, materials written for parent or child care use may be quite unreliable; for example, a pamphlet distributed to child care workers (Koralek, 1999; still in use) claimed that securely attached children will usually not be upset when dropped off at day care, and that they will smile and show interest in other people— questionable statements unless they are accompanied by information about the age and circumstances of the children.
Critical thinking and child development, Part 3
Here is the third section of an unpublished paper on critical thinking issues and teaching child development.
Why do We Want Child Development Students to Develop Critical Thinking?
With respect to learning during a course in child development, it is desirable for students to use critical thinking skills, as such skills will help them to understand how to apply what they learn. Critical thinking skills also help students avoid confusion between related or similar concepts; clarifying material through critical thinking helps students to understand and remember correctly what they have studied. And, of course, application of critical thinking skills helps solve the old problem of “not knowing what’s important.”
In addition, we want students to have critical thinking abilities that are of special importance to child development information, so that they will continue to use a critical approach to developmental issues long after they have forgotten exactly what a Fels multiplier is. Most students will be parents and have the responsibility for choosing schools, medical and psychological treatments, and parenting practices that will influence their children. As one interview study of young parents has shown, parental understanding of early development is spotty at best (Daniel Yankelovitch Group, 2000). Many students will be teachers, participate in choices of academic and social curricula, and interpret tests and behavior. Some students will be attorneys and judges making decisions about child custody and juvenile justice, tasks which will demand some ability to think critically about developmental issues. Some students will be legislators deciding on laws and on funding of family and school services; if these can bring critical thinking skills to their consideration of developmental outcomes, the community will benefit. Some students will be physicians, psychologists, and social workers whose critical thinking skills will directly affect children; they may also be the authors of systematic research syntheses on which other practitioners will depend for their choice of treatment approaches. Finally, of course, a few students will be members of the Society for Research on Child Development, and the developmental scientists of the future.
Why do We Want Child Development Students to Develop Critical Thinking?
With respect to learning during a course in child development, it is desirable for students to use critical thinking skills, as such skills will help them to understand how to apply what they learn. Critical thinking skills also help students avoid confusion between related or similar concepts; clarifying material through critical thinking helps students to understand and remember correctly what they have studied. And, of course, application of critical thinking skills helps solve the old problem of “not knowing what’s important.”
In addition, we want students to have critical thinking abilities that are of special importance to child development information, so that they will continue to use a critical approach to developmental issues long after they have forgotten exactly what a Fels multiplier is. Most students will be parents and have the responsibility for choosing schools, medical and psychological treatments, and parenting practices that will influence their children. As one interview study of young parents has shown, parental understanding of early development is spotty at best (Daniel Yankelovitch Group, 2000). Many students will be teachers, participate in choices of academic and social curricula, and interpret tests and behavior. Some students will be attorneys and judges making decisions about child custody and juvenile justice, tasks which will demand some ability to think critically about developmental issues. Some students will be legislators deciding on laws and on funding of family and school services; if these can bring critical thinking skills to their consideration of developmental outcomes, the community will benefit. Some students will be physicians, psychologists, and social workers whose critical thinking skills will directly affect children; they may also be the authors of systematic research syntheses on which other practitioners will depend for their choice of treatment approaches. Finally, of course, a few students will be members of the Society for Research on Child Development, and the developmental scientists of the future.
Critical thinking and the mastery of child development concepts, Part 2
Here is part 2 of an unpublished paper discussing the use of critical thinking concepts in teaching child development courses.
What is Critical Thinking? And Why Do We Care?
Critical thinking is thought that uses a set of skills specialized for evaluation of evidence and of logical processes that support or fail to support conclusions. The alternative approach, uncritical thinking, accepts evidence and logic that would be rejected if critical thinking skills were applied to the information. In academic circles, critical thinking skills are considered to be highly desirable, but it is unlikely that any human being manages to use such skills on every occasion when they are called for.
In fact, avoidance of critical thinking seems more characteristic of human beings – and more comfortable for them—than its use. As J.A.C. Brown (1963), a student of techniques of persuasion that combat critical thinking, commented, most people want to feel that issues are simple rather than complex, to have their prejudices confirmed, and to find an enemy to blame for their frustrations. To satisfy those common desires usually requires uncritical thinking.
As teachers of developmental science, we would like to move our students away from the characteristics Brown noted. We would prefer for them to do the following, all of which require critical thinking:
1. Understand that human issues are complex.
2. Become willing to examine their own assumptions.
3. Realize that humans behave and may even develop in varying ways, but all share some aspects of human development.
4. Minimize the use of developmental science material to sermonize against “the wrong”, while remembering that understanding of development can improve outcomes.
In considering our situation and goals, we would do well to realize that other disciplines are experiencing similar problems. Natural scientists, in particular, are concerned that “[v]ast numbers of adults fail to take a scientific approach to solving problems or making judgments based on evidence. Instead, they readily accept simplistic answers to complicated problems…” (Alberts, 2009, p. ). In the hope of encouraging students to use critical thinking, natural scientists have set goals for science education such as knowing science facts, generating and evaluating evidence and explanations, understanding the nature and development of scientific knowledge, and participating in scientific practices and discourse (Alberts, 2009; Moore, 1999). Except for the simple knowledge of facts, these goals also require critical thinking.
We cannot devote a semester of a child development course to instruction in critical thinking, but we can give some consideration to reasons for uncritical thought, and to the ways that improvements in critical thinking can improve student understanding and retention of the material they study.
General Critical Thinking Skills
A set of critical thinking skills can be considered as generally applicable to assessment of information, including information about developmental science. Some are more likely than others to be demanded in a first undergraduate course in child development.
Inference. Inference is the skill of discriminating among degrees of truth or falsity of conclusions drawn from given data. While this is a particularly important skill for developmentalists at more advanced levels, few students in the first undergraduate course are called upon to make inferences. Such courses rarely involve examination of data or reading of research articles in professional journals. In addition, inference as carried out in developmental science generally involves statistical analysis, and statistics or research methods courses are usually not prerequisites for the first child development course.
Recognition of assumptions. This critical thinking skill involves the detection of unstated assumptions or presuppositions in given statements or assertions, including, of course, those the person makes himself or herself. Recognition of assumptions is an important skill for students of developmental science, as common beliefs frequently contradict empirical research about development; students who cannot recognize their own a priori beliefs may become confused by what they see as the unlikely results of systematic investigation.
Deduction. The critical thinking skill of deduction involves determining whether certain conclusions necessarily follow from given information. Deduction is an essential aspect of developmental science, and is especially relevant to questions about correlation and causality. As most students do not enter the first course with a background in statistics and research design, coursework may need to emphasize ways in which developmentalists examine conclusions.
Interpretation. The critical thinking skill of interpretation stresses the weighing of evidence and determining whether generalizations or conclusions based on the evidence are warranted. This skill, so important for more advanced developmentalists, is only at its beginning in younger students. Textbooks offer little specific evidence and less evaluation of the source of the evidence, and research reports are generally too complex and difficult for undergraduates to read. Study of research design is needed before most students can evaluate evidence effectively. However, instructors can model evaluation of evidence by discussing research designs as they have been used in the study of child development. Thoughtful Internet assignments may also be valuable in development of this skill.
Evaluation of arguments. This aspect of critical thinking involves distinguishing between arguments that are strong and relevant and those that are weak or irrelevant to a question. Before students can evaluate arguments, they must abandon the position that all evidence is equal, and the belief that it is inappropriate and intolerant to reject someone’s argument. Practice and feedback from the instructor or classmates are helpful supports for development of this skill, but these are rarely provided in child development courses. When students’ performance is evaluated through multiple choice examinations, feedback about irrelevant arguments is quite infrequent. Instructors who want to encourage the development of evaluative ability must commit themselves to dealing with extensive written assignments. Attention to detail is a necessity for critical thinking, and assignments cannot reveal the presence or absence of critical thinking unless they themselves display reasoning in detail.
Attempts have been made to design courses that will improve critical thinking with respect to the study of psychology. Lawson (1999) designed a course that guided study of experimenter bias, single versus multiple causation, correlation as opposed to causation, the use of comparison groups or measures, and the problem of confounding variables. Penningroth and her colleagues (Penningroth, Despain, & Gray, 2007) put together a one-credit course intended to improve psychological critical thinking. These efforts are obviously relevant to the enhancement of critical thinking about developmental science, but the latter topic requires emphasis on additional specific issues that are not necessarily important to the general field of psychology.
What is Critical Thinking? And Why Do We Care?
Critical thinking is thought that uses a set of skills specialized for evaluation of evidence and of logical processes that support or fail to support conclusions. The alternative approach, uncritical thinking, accepts evidence and logic that would be rejected if critical thinking skills were applied to the information. In academic circles, critical thinking skills are considered to be highly desirable, but it is unlikely that any human being manages to use such skills on every occasion when they are called for.
In fact, avoidance of critical thinking seems more characteristic of human beings – and more comfortable for them—than its use. As J.A.C. Brown (1963), a student of techniques of persuasion that combat critical thinking, commented, most people want to feel that issues are simple rather than complex, to have their prejudices confirmed, and to find an enemy to blame for their frustrations. To satisfy those common desires usually requires uncritical thinking.
As teachers of developmental science, we would like to move our students away from the characteristics Brown noted. We would prefer for them to do the following, all of which require critical thinking:
1. Understand that human issues are complex.
2. Become willing to examine their own assumptions.
3. Realize that humans behave and may even develop in varying ways, but all share some aspects of human development.
4. Minimize the use of developmental science material to sermonize against “the wrong”, while remembering that understanding of development can improve outcomes.
In considering our situation and goals, we would do well to realize that other disciplines are experiencing similar problems. Natural scientists, in particular, are concerned that “[v]ast numbers of adults fail to take a scientific approach to solving problems or making judgments based on evidence. Instead, they readily accept simplistic answers to complicated problems…” (Alberts, 2009, p. ). In the hope of encouraging students to use critical thinking, natural scientists have set goals for science education such as knowing science facts, generating and evaluating evidence and explanations, understanding the nature and development of scientific knowledge, and participating in scientific practices and discourse (Alberts, 2009; Moore, 1999). Except for the simple knowledge of facts, these goals also require critical thinking.
We cannot devote a semester of a child development course to instruction in critical thinking, but we can give some consideration to reasons for uncritical thought, and to the ways that improvements in critical thinking can improve student understanding and retention of the material they study.
General Critical Thinking Skills
A set of critical thinking skills can be considered as generally applicable to assessment of information, including information about developmental science. Some are more likely than others to be demanded in a first undergraduate course in child development.
Inference. Inference is the skill of discriminating among degrees of truth or falsity of conclusions drawn from given data. While this is a particularly important skill for developmentalists at more advanced levels, few students in the first undergraduate course are called upon to make inferences. Such courses rarely involve examination of data or reading of research articles in professional journals. In addition, inference as carried out in developmental science generally involves statistical analysis, and statistics or research methods courses are usually not prerequisites for the first child development course.
Recognition of assumptions. This critical thinking skill involves the detection of unstated assumptions or presuppositions in given statements or assertions, including, of course, those the person makes himself or herself. Recognition of assumptions is an important skill for students of developmental science, as common beliefs frequently contradict empirical research about development; students who cannot recognize their own a priori beliefs may become confused by what they see as the unlikely results of systematic investigation.
Deduction. The critical thinking skill of deduction involves determining whether certain conclusions necessarily follow from given information. Deduction is an essential aspect of developmental science, and is especially relevant to questions about correlation and causality. As most students do not enter the first course with a background in statistics and research design, coursework may need to emphasize ways in which developmentalists examine conclusions.
Interpretation. The critical thinking skill of interpretation stresses the weighing of evidence and determining whether generalizations or conclusions based on the evidence are warranted. This skill, so important for more advanced developmentalists, is only at its beginning in younger students. Textbooks offer little specific evidence and less evaluation of the source of the evidence, and research reports are generally too complex and difficult for undergraduates to read. Study of research design is needed before most students can evaluate evidence effectively. However, instructors can model evaluation of evidence by discussing research designs as they have been used in the study of child development. Thoughtful Internet assignments may also be valuable in development of this skill.
Evaluation of arguments. This aspect of critical thinking involves distinguishing between arguments that are strong and relevant and those that are weak or irrelevant to a question. Before students can evaluate arguments, they must abandon the position that all evidence is equal, and the belief that it is inappropriate and intolerant to reject someone’s argument. Practice and feedback from the instructor or classmates are helpful supports for development of this skill, but these are rarely provided in child development courses. When students’ performance is evaluated through multiple choice examinations, feedback about irrelevant arguments is quite infrequent. Instructors who want to encourage the development of evaluative ability must commit themselves to dealing with extensive written assignments. Attention to detail is a necessity for critical thinking, and assignments cannot reveal the presence or absence of critical thinking unless they themselves display reasoning in detail.
Attempts have been made to design courses that will improve critical thinking with respect to the study of psychology. Lawson (1999) designed a course that guided study of experimenter bias, single versus multiple causation, correlation as opposed to causation, the use of comparison groups or measures, and the problem of confounding variables. Penningroth and her colleagues (Penningroth, Despain, & Gray, 2007) put together a one-credit course intended to improve psychological critical thinking. These efforts are obviously relevant to the enhancement of critical thinking about developmental science, but the latter topic requires emphasis on additional specific issues that are not necessarily important to the general field of psychology.
Critical thinking and child development concepts: Introduction
This post and several subsequent posts comprise an unpublished paper dealing with teaching issues and on the use of critical thinking concepts as they apply to the understanding of child development.
Critical Thinking and the Mastery of Child Development Concepts
Developmental psychology, developmental science, child development, childhood and
adolescence, lifespan development: all these terms can be used for courses that attempt to teach
how developmental change functions in humans from conception through adolescence. Why so
many different names? Part of the answer has to do with the ways course materials are organized
and divided, but more is related to rapidly changing characteristics of a field that is quite
different from what it was fifty years ago.
A changing field creates a challenge for instructors, but the study of child development
(to choose one of the labels) presents other challenges too. Child development courses involve
more natural science components than other psychology courses, with the exception of
physiological psychology and of sensation and perception. Students, and even instructors, may
find it unexpectedly difficult to master neuroscience and genetics concepts for which they may
have little background. Research design and its implications are essential to the understanding of
causal factors in child development, but few psychology curricula have statistics or research
methods as prerequisites for child development courses, even though variability is at the heart of
any discussion of development. These natural and mathematical science aspects of child
development courses are particularly difficult to combine with more value-related material
(“how should parents behave?”) or material with immediate practical effects (“how should
schools be run?”)
Further challenges arise because of expectations and beliefs about development which
students bring into the class. One problematic expectation is that everyone’s personal
experiences are a good background for study of child development-- that in fact everyone,
having been a child, already knows a good deal about developmental change in childhood.
However, although students think they have a lot of knowledge about development, the evidence
seems to be that adults actually have a rather poor understanding of development, especially of
its social and emotional aspects (Daniel Yankelovitch Group, 2000).
Complex material like developmental science requires a high level of critical thinking for
mastery. In this paper, I will discuss some important critical thinking issues relevant to the
teaching of child development courses, and will propose some practices that may help harness
critical thinking skills and improve student understanding.
Critical Thinking and the Mastery of Child Development Concepts
Developmental psychology, developmental science, child development, childhood and
adolescence, lifespan development: all these terms can be used for courses that attempt to teach
how developmental change functions in humans from conception through adolescence. Why so
many different names? Part of the answer has to do with the ways course materials are organized
and divided, but more is related to rapidly changing characteristics of a field that is quite
different from what it was fifty years ago.
A changing field creates a challenge for instructors, but the study of child development
(to choose one of the labels) presents other challenges too. Child development courses involve
more natural science components than other psychology courses, with the exception of
physiological psychology and of sensation and perception. Students, and even instructors, may
find it unexpectedly difficult to master neuroscience and genetics concepts for which they may
have little background. Research design and its implications are essential to the understanding of
causal factors in child development, but few psychology curricula have statistics or research
methods as prerequisites for child development courses, even though variability is at the heart of
any discussion of development. These natural and mathematical science aspects of child
development courses are particularly difficult to combine with more value-related material
(“how should parents behave?”) or material with immediate practical effects (“how should
schools be run?”)
Further challenges arise because of expectations and beliefs about development which
students bring into the class. One problematic expectation is that everyone’s personal
experiences are a good background for study of child development-- that in fact everyone,
having been a child, already knows a good deal about developmental change in childhood.
However, although students think they have a lot of knowledge about development, the evidence
seems to be that adults actually have a rather poor understanding of development, especially of
its social and emotional aspects (Daniel Yankelovitch Group, 2000).
Complex material like developmental science requires a high level of critical thinking for
mastery. In this paper, I will discuss some important critical thinking issues relevant to the
teaching of child development courses, and will propose some practices that may help harness
critical thinking skills and improve student understanding.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Reasoning from animals to humans
A fascinating recent article on an ability usually thought to be human, but apparently shared by some birds:
von Bayern, A.M.P., & Emery, N.J. (2009). Jackdaws respond to human attentional states and communicative cues in different contexts. Current Biology, 19 (7), 602-606.
These researchers looked at the ability of jackdaws to pay attention to the eye movements of nearby humans-- a skill that human beings show from an early age. Human infants develop in the first year of life the ability to look at another person's gaze and figure out what he or she is looking at, as well as the ability to use their own eyes as "pointers" and attract another person's attention to something by looking at the object and then back at the person. However, animals like chimpanzees and dogs do not seem to be able to "read" eyes in this way, although they pay attention to the way a person's head is turned. Can birds demonstrate a skill that chimps and dogs cannot?
von Bayern and Emery put out food for their jackdaws and then timed how long it took them to approach it when an unfamiliar (so, from the jackdaws' viewpoint, possibly dangerous) person was gazing at it. The jackdaws hesitated to approach the food that a stranger was looking at, but readily approached it when a familiar person gazed at it. But the jackdaws did not seem to be able to follow a steady gaze to find food they could not see; a familiar person had to shift the eyes toward the food and point in order to get the birds to pick up on the help that was offered.
Why should jackdaws be able to use humans' eye movements or gaze to get information, when "higher" animals cannot? Does this study mean that other birds can also pick up cues from humans' eyes? One possible reason for jackdaws--but not necessarily other birds-- to have this ability is that jackdaws have dark pupils and light irises, as many humans do. This pattern makes for a complex and attention-getting visual stimulus which may
be familiar to these birds because they have looked at other jackdaws. Of course, human eyes are even more complex patterns, because they have the surrounding white area as well as the contrast between pupil and iris.
Birds that have all-dark "shoe-button" eyes may not have experienced bird eye movements as interesting or important, so they may not pay attention even to the details of human eyes. In addition, the jackdaws in this study had been reared by humans and had had a good deal of face-to-face social interaction, with a chance to learn a lot about the meaning of human eye movements. Birds who grew up in the wild might react differently.
In fact, knowing about jackdaws does not tell us directly about other kinds of birds. Only similar research with other birds can do this. In the same way, research with human-reared jackdaws does not tell us directly about wild-reared jackdaws. Jumping from bird to human, or even from bird to bird, is a dangerous form of speculation unless we have a lot more information about each species.
The ethologist and Nobel prizewinner Nikolaas Tinbergen got into some dangerous speculation years ago when he jumped from studies of ducks to consideration of autistic children. Tinbergen proposed that attracting the gaze of autistic children would help them pay more attention to human beings and lead them to behave more normally. Tinbergen even suggested the use of masks with extra-big eyes that would catch the children's attention.
Tinbergen's method proved to be of little use, but the idea that autistic children avoid attention to other people's gaze continues to be heard frequently. However, researchers like M.A. Gernsbacher have shown some evidence that autistic children are not avoiding eye contact, but instead are able to see others' eyes when they are not in the center of the visual field, a difficult task for the non-autistic to carry out.
Tempting though it may be to jump speculatively from jackdaws to humans or from ducks to autistic children, we need to study each group carefully and separately, or risk making serious mistakes. It's particularly risky to assume that more "advanced" creatures have all the characteristics of all the less advanced ones, and additional characteristics as well. Most of us would consider a chimpanzee more advanced than a jackdaw, but it appears that the jackdaw can do at least one important thing that the chimp cannot.
von Bayern, A.M.P., & Emery, N.J. (2009). Jackdaws respond to human attentional states and communicative cues in different contexts. Current Biology, 19 (7), 602-606.
These researchers looked at the ability of jackdaws to pay attention to the eye movements of nearby humans-- a skill that human beings show from an early age. Human infants develop in the first year of life the ability to look at another person's gaze and figure out what he or she is looking at, as well as the ability to use their own eyes as "pointers" and attract another person's attention to something by looking at the object and then back at the person. However, animals like chimpanzees and dogs do not seem to be able to "read" eyes in this way, although they pay attention to the way a person's head is turned. Can birds demonstrate a skill that chimps and dogs cannot?
von Bayern and Emery put out food for their jackdaws and then timed how long it took them to approach it when an unfamiliar (so, from the jackdaws' viewpoint, possibly dangerous) person was gazing at it. The jackdaws hesitated to approach the food that a stranger was looking at, but readily approached it when a familiar person gazed at it. But the jackdaws did not seem to be able to follow a steady gaze to find food they could not see; a familiar person had to shift the eyes toward the food and point in order to get the birds to pick up on the help that was offered.
Why should jackdaws be able to use humans' eye movements or gaze to get information, when "higher" animals cannot? Does this study mean that other birds can also pick up cues from humans' eyes? One possible reason for jackdaws--but not necessarily other birds-- to have this ability is that jackdaws have dark pupils and light irises, as many humans do. This pattern makes for a complex and attention-getting visual stimulus which may
be familiar to these birds because they have looked at other jackdaws. Of course, human eyes are even more complex patterns, because they have the surrounding white area as well as the contrast between pupil and iris.
Birds that have all-dark "shoe-button" eyes may not have experienced bird eye movements as interesting or important, so they may not pay attention even to the details of human eyes. In addition, the jackdaws in this study had been reared by humans and had had a good deal of face-to-face social interaction, with a chance to learn a lot about the meaning of human eye movements. Birds who grew up in the wild might react differently.
In fact, knowing about jackdaws does not tell us directly about other kinds of birds. Only similar research with other birds can do this. In the same way, research with human-reared jackdaws does not tell us directly about wild-reared jackdaws. Jumping from bird to human, or even from bird to bird, is a dangerous form of speculation unless we have a lot more information about each species.
The ethologist and Nobel prizewinner Nikolaas Tinbergen got into some dangerous speculation years ago when he jumped from studies of ducks to consideration of autistic children. Tinbergen proposed that attracting the gaze of autistic children would help them pay more attention to human beings and lead them to behave more normally. Tinbergen even suggested the use of masks with extra-big eyes that would catch the children's attention.
Tinbergen's method proved to be of little use, but the idea that autistic children avoid attention to other people's gaze continues to be heard frequently. However, researchers like M.A. Gernsbacher have shown some evidence that autistic children are not avoiding eye contact, but instead are able to see others' eyes when they are not in the center of the visual field, a difficult task for the non-autistic to carry out.
Tempting though it may be to jump speculatively from jackdaws to humans or from ducks to autistic children, we need to study each group carefully and separately, or risk making serious mistakes. It's particularly risky to assume that more "advanced" creatures have all the characteristics of all the less advanced ones, and additional characteristics as well. Most of us would consider a chimpanzee more advanced than a jackdaw, but it appears that the jackdaw can do at least one important thing that the chimp cannot.
Monday, April 6, 2009
The animal-human analogy
Several days ago, I commented on an article by Price in which information about mouse behavior was
[over]generalized to suggest that human beings showed similar factors at work in maternal behavior. This tendency to equate behaviors of different species has become quite common, especially in textbooks for undergraduate courses, where authors hesitate to acknowledge that they are using animal studies. (This hesitation is not just because of the problems human-animal analogies create, but because of the strength of organizations like PETA that object to experimental work with animal subjects.)
The issue of human-animal comparisons is one we should think about in this Darwin anniversary year. My concern is not about rejecting all such comparisons. Some do reject the analogy on the grounds that humans are special, made in God's image, have souls, etc., and thus are not comparable to non-humans. I accept the comparison and think it can be valuable-- but only when it is used with caution.
The human-animal analogy is easily "abused" by people who consider that what is known about one must provide reliable information about the other. In fact, such reasoning only works when careful comparisons have been made of the characteristics the two groups have in common AND that are relevant to the question at hand. Mice have fur, humans have hair; this commonality is relevant to skin functions, but probably not to the study of maternal behavior. Humans mourn over dead babies; mice eat them-- does this difference mean they have nothing relevant in common? Only attention to detail can tell us where we are in any comparison of one species to another.
As J.P. Scott showed many years ago, not only species but strain differences shape social behavior in dogs. Comparing one strain of one species to members of another species may give quite different results than if another strain were used in the comparison.
Studies of animal behavior are fascinating and valuable in themselves. Sometimes it may be possible to use their data to explain human characteristics-- but sometimes, and more often, not. To find out about a species, it's best to study that species.
[over]generalized to suggest that human beings showed similar factors at work in maternal behavior. This tendency to equate behaviors of different species has become quite common, especially in textbooks for undergraduate courses, where authors hesitate to acknowledge that they are using animal studies. (This hesitation is not just because of the problems human-animal analogies create, but because of the strength of organizations like PETA that object to experimental work with animal subjects.)
The issue of human-animal comparisons is one we should think about in this Darwin anniversary year. My concern is not about rejecting all such comparisons. Some do reject the analogy on the grounds that humans are special, made in God's image, have souls, etc., and thus are not comparable to non-humans. I accept the comparison and think it can be valuable-- but only when it is used with caution.
The human-animal analogy is easily "abused" by people who consider that what is known about one must provide reliable information about the other. In fact, such reasoning only works when careful comparisons have been made of the characteristics the two groups have in common AND that are relevant to the question at hand. Mice have fur, humans have hair; this commonality is relevant to skin functions, but probably not to the study of maternal behavior. Humans mourn over dead babies; mice eat them-- does this difference mean they have nothing relevant in common? Only attention to detail can tell us where we are in any comparison of one species to another.
As J.P. Scott showed many years ago, not only species but strain differences shape social behavior in dogs. Comparing one strain of one species to members of another species may give quite different results than if another strain were used in the comparison.
Studies of animal behavior are fascinating and valuable in themselves. Sometimes it may be possible to use their data to explain human characteristics-- but sometimes, and more often, not. To find out about a species, it's best to study that species.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Those Book Reviews
On both Amazon and Barnes & noble, several of my books-- including Myths and Misunderstandings--have been the targets of attacks by review. Curiously, one such review appeared when Myths and Misunderstandings was still in production, weeks before it was released to the public, but the "reviewer" apparently thought he knew what was in it. He posted almost identical reviews for two other books on quite different topics, as well as for Myths.
Here are some points made in these attack reviews, and some needed corrections or elaborations:
1. The reviews say that child development textbooks are more appropriate than Myths .
Comment: How true! Myths is not a child development textbook and could not take the place of one. It is a supplementary text, to be used parallel with either a chronologically- or a topically-organized child development text. The two types of books are like apples and apple pie, related but not the same thing.
2. The reviews note that I am not a mental health professional and conclude that I am without training on child development.
Comment: No, of course I am not a mental health professional, nor have I ever claimed to be one. I have a doctorate in general experimental psychology and have worked in the area of developmental psychology for 35 years. As a matter of fact, I was for 5 years president of the New Jersey Association for Infant Mental Health and am still an officer of that organization, so I have some expertise in the problems of parents and young children, but like many people working in infant mental health I am not licensed and do not regard myself as a therapist. I taught courses on child and adolescent development and on infant development for over 30 years. I recently gave an invited presentation on critical thinking in the teaching of child development at the developmental science teaching institute of the Society for Research in Child Development.
I should point out that most mental health professionals have very little formal training in child development, with a single undergraduate course as the most common preparation. References to licensure are certainly impressive to the layperson, but let's recall that barbers have to be licensed too; academic training and licensure are not necessarily the same thing.
3. The attack reviews claim that Myths is poorly written and inaccurate.
Comment: Like all books brought out by legitimate publishers (as opposed to vanity presses or "printer-ready" publishers), Myths went through several rounds of reviews by experts in the field, was copy-edited, and received further attention in the course of production. Any book may contain errors in spite of all efforts, and if the reviewer has seen some, I wish he would point them out specifically. As he has not done so, I assume that he is simply grasping at straws in this attempt to find negative statements to make.
What is it all about? Readers who have seen the negative reviews may have noticed one signed by Arthur Becker-Weidman. In fact, the others are either written or instigated by the same person. Becker-Weidman is given to the use of various "sock puppets" as a way of avoiding genuine discussion, and as a consequence of this habit he has recently been banned from Wikipedia for the second time.
Becker-Weidman is a licensed clinical social worker in New York state and a practitioner of a treatment called Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy(DDP), used primarily with adopted children. He would like to present DDP as evidence-based and therefore appropriate for coverage by private and public health insurance , but the research done so far does not qualify it for that category. Becker-Weidman's motivation to attack my books stems from the fact that I have pointed out in print that DDP is not evidence-based. An additional issue for him is that I have pointed out to journal editors his penchant for self-plagiarism and submission to journals of material that has been published elsewhere.
There is more to tell about this situation, but I will keep that back until events warrant telling it.
Meanwhile, I hope readers will become aware that public "reviews" and sources like Wikipedia may be far from objective in nature. Personal axes are readily ground in these ways.
Here are some points made in these attack reviews, and some needed corrections or elaborations:
1. The reviews say that child development textbooks are more appropriate than Myths .
Comment: How true! Myths is not a child development textbook and could not take the place of one. It is a supplementary text, to be used parallel with either a chronologically- or a topically-organized child development text. The two types of books are like apples and apple pie, related but not the same thing.
2. The reviews note that I am not a mental health professional and conclude that I am without training on child development.
Comment: No, of course I am not a mental health professional, nor have I ever claimed to be one. I have a doctorate in general experimental psychology and have worked in the area of developmental psychology for 35 years. As a matter of fact, I was for 5 years president of the New Jersey Association for Infant Mental Health and am still an officer of that organization, so I have some expertise in the problems of parents and young children, but like many people working in infant mental health I am not licensed and do not regard myself as a therapist. I taught courses on child and adolescent development and on infant development for over 30 years. I recently gave an invited presentation on critical thinking in the teaching of child development at the developmental science teaching institute of the Society for Research in Child Development.
I should point out that most mental health professionals have very little formal training in child development, with a single undergraduate course as the most common preparation. References to licensure are certainly impressive to the layperson, but let's recall that barbers have to be licensed too; academic training and licensure are not necessarily the same thing.
3. The attack reviews claim that Myths is poorly written and inaccurate.
Comment: Like all books brought out by legitimate publishers (as opposed to vanity presses or "printer-ready" publishers), Myths went through several rounds of reviews by experts in the field, was copy-edited, and received further attention in the course of production. Any book may contain errors in spite of all efforts, and if the reviewer has seen some, I wish he would point them out specifically. As he has not done so, I assume that he is simply grasping at straws in this attempt to find negative statements to make.
What is it all about? Readers who have seen the negative reviews may have noticed one signed by Arthur Becker-Weidman. In fact, the others are either written or instigated by the same person. Becker-Weidman is given to the use of various "sock puppets" as a way of avoiding genuine discussion, and as a consequence of this habit he has recently been banned from Wikipedia for the second time.
Becker-Weidman is a licensed clinical social worker in New York state and a practitioner of a treatment called Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy(DDP), used primarily with adopted children. He would like to present DDP as evidence-based and therefore appropriate for coverage by private and public health insurance , but the research done so far does not qualify it for that category. Becker-Weidman's motivation to attack my books stems from the fact that I have pointed out in print that DDP is not evidence-based. An additional issue for him is that I have pointed out to journal editors his penchant for self-plagiarism and submission to journals of material that has been published elsewhere.
There is more to tell about this situation, but I will keep that back until events warrant telling it.
Meanwhile, I hope readers will become aware that public "reviews" and sources like Wikipedia may be far from objective in nature. Personal axes are readily ground in these ways.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
After, or before AND after? A cautionary tale
An article by Bendict Carey in the New York Times' "Science Times" section, Feb. 24, 2009, was entitled "After abuse, changes in the brain." What was missing from this title? Well, a question mark would have made it a much better summary of the material below it. Evidence in the article implied, but did not justify, the conclusion that brain characteristics existed after abusive treatment, but had not existed before.
Carey described research by Patrick McGowan et al., published in Nature Neuroscience, which compared the brains of 12 suicides who had suffered abuse in childhood with those of 12 other suicides who had not been abused. Genetic analysis showed that the first group had a good deal less genetic activity in genes that govern certain receptors on neurons than did the second group. The receptors in question function to help clear stress hormones that affect neurons.
It is plausible that experience of abuse could change the relevant genetic functions. But are there other equally plausible explanations? For example, what if children whose brains cleared stress hormones poorly behaved in ways that made adults more likely to abuse them? Children who do not calm down after being scolded or punished may trigger escalation of adult hostility, even to the point where punishment becomes abuse. Thus, genetic characteristics could determine the experience of abuse rather than the other way around.
If there is only one plausible explanation for an event, we often accept it (rightly or wrongly) even without any empirical support for the idea. But if there is more than one plausible explanation, we should certainly accept neither on the basis of plausibility alone. In this case, a good deal more evidence will be needed before we can accept the article headline with its present punctuation.
Carey described research by Patrick McGowan et al., published in Nature Neuroscience, which compared the brains of 12 suicides who had suffered abuse in childhood with those of 12 other suicides who had not been abused. Genetic analysis showed that the first group had a good deal less genetic activity in genes that govern certain receptors on neurons than did the second group. The receptors in question function to help clear stress hormones that affect neurons.
It is plausible that experience of abuse could change the relevant genetic functions. But are there other equally plausible explanations? For example, what if children whose brains cleared stress hormones poorly behaved in ways that made adults more likely to abuse them? Children who do not calm down after being scolded or punished may trigger escalation of adult hostility, even to the point where punishment becomes abuse. Thus, genetic characteristics could determine the experience of abuse rather than the other way around.
If there is only one plausible explanation for an event, we often accept it (rightly or wrongly) even without any empirical support for the idea. But if there is more than one plausible explanation, we should certainly accept neither on the basis of plausibility alone. In this case, a good deal more evidence will be needed before we can accept the article headline with its present punctuation.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Something to read-- critically
An article that appeared in Monitor on Psychology, Feb. 2009-- "Programmed for life?", by Michael Price-- offers food for critical thought. According to the sub-headline, "Your developmental environment can... even predict how you'll treat your children." In support of this claim, the article offers discussion of mouse maternal behavior and the ways it is affected by the mouse mothers' early experiences.
Maternal behavior in all species is a fascinating and fruitful research topic. Maternal care involves a complex set of cues exchanged by mother and young, with sights, smells, sounds, and touch sensations all triggering or modulating an essential exchange of behaviors. But... can research into mouse mothering tell us what we need to know about human child-rearing? Is the analogy between mouse and human behavior good enough for us to use the former to draw conclusions about the latter?
The way to answer this question is to look at details of the two phenomena that are being compared. If relevant details are shared by the two, it may be safe to use one to give us information about the other; if they do not overlap by much, conclusions from the comparison may amount to "abusing the analogy"
What do mother mice do to care for their pups? They permit pups to find the nipples and nurse. They lick the pups' rears to stimulate urination and defecation. They clean the nest by eating waste products, afterbirth, and any dead pups they find. When pups get out of the nest (where they may get cold or be in danger), the mother follows their squeaks and retrieves them, picking them up in her mouth. This pattern lasts as long as the pups are hairless, but when they start to grow fur, the mother responds to them much less.
What do human mothers (and fathers) do for their offspring? They place the baby at the breast or offer other food sources. They use diapers or hold the baby away from them to deal with elimination, which by the way they don't need to stimulate. They clean the baby with water. They carry the baby around for many months, usually even after it is able to walk. And they continue to care for their children for many years, even after they are sexually mature.
Is there much overlap between these maternal behavior patterns? No, it doesn't seem that there is. Is the
Monitor writer guilty of abusing an analogy? That seems very possible.
It is possible that parallels between human and mouse maternal behavior are appropriate, but some direct evidence is needed to show this. A loose analogy alone can't do the job.
Maternal behavior in all species is a fascinating and fruitful research topic. Maternal care involves a complex set of cues exchanged by mother and young, with sights, smells, sounds, and touch sensations all triggering or modulating an essential exchange of behaviors. But... can research into mouse mothering tell us what we need to know about human child-rearing? Is the analogy between mouse and human behavior good enough for us to use the former to draw conclusions about the latter?
The way to answer this question is to look at details of the two phenomena that are being compared. If relevant details are shared by the two, it may be safe to use one to give us information about the other; if they do not overlap by much, conclusions from the comparison may amount to "abusing the analogy"
What do mother mice do to care for their pups? They permit pups to find the nipples and nurse. They lick the pups' rears to stimulate urination and defecation. They clean the nest by eating waste products, afterbirth, and any dead pups they find. When pups get out of the nest (where they may get cold or be in danger), the mother follows their squeaks and retrieves them, picking them up in her mouth. This pattern lasts as long as the pups are hairless, but when they start to grow fur, the mother responds to them much less.
What do human mothers (and fathers) do for their offspring? They place the baby at the breast or offer other food sources. They use diapers or hold the baby away from them to deal with elimination, which by the way they don't need to stimulate. They clean the baby with water. They carry the baby around for many months, usually even after it is able to walk. And they continue to care for their children for many years, even after they are sexually mature.
Is there much overlap between these maternal behavior patterns? No, it doesn't seem that there is. Is the
Monitor writer guilty of abusing an analogy? That seems very possible.
It is possible that parallels between human and mouse maternal behavior are appropriate, but some direct evidence is needed to show this. A loose analogy alone can't do the job.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Presentation schedule: April 1, 2009
I will be presenting at the Developmental Science Teaching Institute, a preconference meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, April 1, 2009, in Denver, CO. The title of the presentation is "Don't be so [un]critical! Using critical thinking to foster mastery of child development concepts." This presentation will draw some parallels between concerns about general science education and about undergraduate child development courses, and will look at general critical thinking skills like inference as they apply to the study of child development. Reasons for students' weak critical thinking abilities will be explored, and concerns about both textbooks and instructor practices will be discussed. Specific problems of critical thinking about child development-- for example, the heavy use of analogies in developmental science-- will be addressed. Finally, some suggestions will be given for ways in which line-by-line reading and analysis can encourage critical thinking and the mastery of child development theory and fact.
Myths and Misunderstandings: What's It About?
This blog is an extension of the web site childmyths.com, which contains information about my recent book
Child Development: Myths and Misunderstandings (Sage, 2009).
I'll use the blog to announce my presentation schedule and to pass on references to recently-published books and articles that may help readers analyze common myths and misunderstandings about child development.
Child Development: Myths and Misunderstandings (Sage, 2009).
I'll use the blog to announce my presentation schedule and to pass on references to recently-published books and articles that may help readers analyze common myths and misunderstandings about child development.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
