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Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust

sciencedaily.com

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Re: Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust

#91

Post by literallycancer »

shiven wrote: post #26
smallnamespace wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you only ever hear positive things from someone That rule seems overly strict perhaps? Like if someone only says positive things, but only occasionally, then there is still a signal there.

This. What happened to if you have nothing positive to say then keep shut? Positive praise, if rare, with neutral (or no) feedback otherwise, can have a similar effect.

It's harder to improve something when you never get negative feedback. I'd rather hear a negative opinion than nothing (when looking for feedback, that is).

Re: Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust

#92

Post by literallycancer »

user837387 wrote: post #88
cheald wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad, while never a national level player, taught me chess, and likewise never let me win. The day that I beat him for the first time was an enormous triumph for me, and I'm happily imparting that to my own kids now. My 8 year old hadn't beat me yet, but his game has developed rapidly and that first win isn't very far off now. I'll offer him advice and help him understand why a given move was good or bad, but his m…

I do not understand how can he beat you if you started playing as a kid. Granted, I don't know what I'm talking about but unless you are going senile I don't see how he can beat you while he's still a kid.

Lack of practice because of other commitments perhaps?

Re: Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust

#93

Post by [deleted] »

shiven wrote: post #26
smallnamespace wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you only ever hear positive things from someone That rule seems overly strict perhaps? Like if someone only says positive things, but only occasionally, then there is still a signal there.

This. What happened to if you have nothing positive to say then keep shut? Positive praise, if rare, with neutral (or no) feedback otherwise, can have a similar effect.

[deleted]

Re: Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust

#94

Post by jonex »

bzbarsky wrote: post #58
stractract wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't see it. How on earth would a kid recognize unhelpful advice if it still resulted in finding the object? The kid does not know the game is rigged. I think it is more likely the article has not fully explained the experiment. It would make me sad to think this was actually published.

Say the advice is "look behind the couch in the living room" and the object is later found on the kitchen counter. And the rigging consists of the experimenter asking the kid to get something unrelated from the kitchen, for example. But yes, it's hard to determine whether this is how the experiment worked from the article. Unfortunately the actual paper at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096516.…

I used my student super powers on that and now have the answer!

There was actually 4 similar studies described in the article. But the first one is the most important.

The setup was that the kid would watch a video where a toy was hidden in one of two cups. The helpful person would point out to the kid in which cup the toy was hidden. The unhelpful person would not give any hints at all but rather just explain which toy was hidden. The kid would of course follow the helpful persons advice, but would have to guess in void of any advice.

The kid would then get to guess in which cup the toy was hidden, whereafter the answer was revealed in the video. However, in the successful condition, the answer was modified so the kid would guess right no matter what.

This was repeated eight times, after which the kid got to choose which person would give them advice for four more trials.

It was in this situation it showed that the kids who had always been successful did not seem to value the better advice they would expect to get from the helpful person while the kids who had failed due to lack of advice chose the helpful person.

In the article they discuss this being due to the kid trusting their own ability to guess, not needing any help.

I'd say that the results are academically interesting as they increase our understanding of children's decision making. But I don't think they should be taken out of context and be applied as a some kind of answer on how to do parenting and teaching.

Re: Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust

#95

Post by nercht12 »

stractract wrote: post #54
dragonwolf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point they were trying to make was that even though the kids had benefitted in earlier games from helpful advice and received no benefit when given unhelpful advice that by being allowed to then succeed in the rigged game the kids failed to acknowledge the value of the earlier advice. This shown by the kids not having a preference for the more helpful person. Though I think the conclusion they are drawing…

I still don't see it. How on earth would a kid recognize unhelpful advice if it still resulted in finding the object? The kid does not know the game is rigged. I think it is more likely the article has not fully explained the experiment. It would make me sad to think this was actually published.

I'm with you. I think the whole "good" advice and "bad" advice is relative. It could be misconstrued and applied to the real world. Someone could say that "good" advice is stealing, ripping off people's accounts because if you do it right, you get to reap the rewards earlier than hard work and you don't have to suffer the consequences. In this case, it sounds to me like the researchers are painting "good" and "bad" by their own subjective opinion, and they end up getting the obvious "I didn't agree with your conclusion" result, but from children. When those children grow up and start calculating the extra time it takes based on poor advice, they will probably learn and come to different conclusions like we all have. But as it is, children are naturally trusting and don't expect some jerk is going to lie to them. Too bad the world is harsh.

Re: Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust

#96

Post by nzealand »

kosma wrote: post #61
foobarian wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get your kids started with board-game type games? I have a 3yro and we just have "silly fun" with dice but I'm trying to figure out how to show him the "move N places forward" mechanic where N is the number on the die.

Isn't 3yo a bit too early? I mean, at three years old a child is legally smart enough not to swallow the dice... but I thought knowing how to interpret numbers and apply them is a bit more advanced than knowing not to eat the numbery thing. ;)

I try to avoid telling a 3 year old what they are incapable of doing.

The 3 year old will tell you what they want to do.

At 3, my little guy's favorite toy was rated for 8+ years old, and his favorite game was chess.

He never cared if he won or lost at chess, his primary purpose was to push his pawns, castle, and then get in at least one en passant.

Re: Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust

#97

Post by ChuckMcM »

foobarian wrote: post #47
joaorico wrote: post #17

One solution strategy that works very well from my experience is to ask them upfront whether they want to play "for real" or to play to learn. [edit: A third mode is "for (silly) fun" where everything is allowed.] This works for all ages... and for boardgames and physical games. It's their choice which mode they want to play in, and they trust and respect you more when given the choice. You treat them as a peer. You…

How did you get your kids started with board-game type games? I have a 3yro and we just have "silly fun" with dice but I'm trying to figure out how to show him the "move N places forward" mechanic where N is the number on the die.

Tie the level of dessert to the rarity of the dice roll. :-) (oh, and don't explain the game).

Re: Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust

#98

Post by johnloeber »

throwaway729 wrote: post #83
johnloeber wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ludo's fundamental, underlying lesson is that your actions don't matter at all. (The player has literally no agency in the game, it could be equivalently played by a RNG.) That doesn't seem like a good parenting lesson. A board game should be an opportunity to develop strategic thinking skills, rather than teaching the child that they're irrelevant.

> That doesn't seem like a good parenting lesson Lots of things in life (good and bad) are pure luck. Handling things you "do/don't deserve" with appropriate emotional responses is a valuable life skill.

To be clear: the bad parenting lesson is that the child learns that their actions don't matter. Rolling the dice gives the illusion of agency, but of course the child does not actually get to make any decisions. Their actions do not map to any recognizable outcomes; they may as well act completely randomly. This strikes me as a bad thing to learn.

> Lots of things in life (good and bad) are pure luck. Handling things you "do/don't deserve" with appropriate emotional responses is a valuable life skill.

That is also true.

Re: Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust

#100

Post by mncharity »

joaorico wrote: post #17

One solution strategy that works very well from my experience is to ask them upfront whether they want to play "for real" or to play to learn. [edit: A third mode is "for (silly) fun" where everything is allowed.] This works for all ages... and for boardgames and physical games. It's their choice which mode they want to play in, and they trust and respect you more when given the choice. You treat them as a peer. You…

Another option is to take on additional objectives, which serve to handicap you.

For instance, when competing to win, there's little room to be exploratory, playful, envelope pushing, maximizing learning. First tries at anything mostly fail. So I'll say "I'm going to focus on learning new things, not just on winning". And verbalize the exploration like "hmm, I wonder if...", attempt, and post mortem review ("I just tried X... and Y happened"). Or offer that as an option - "I'd like to try throwing (at target) under my leg... or would you rather I throw regular?"

Play to teach can be mixed in as a part-time objective. "Fake-oops, I dropped my card face up. What was it? What's something you might do differently knowing I have that?"

One can also optimizing for game interesting / fun. "Well I could use this card to wipe you out there, instead of discarding it, but this is so much fun, I want to fight it out".

So never "illusionary success", always transparent honesty. But being explicit that there can be more than one "game" at play. But also have to watch that this all doesn't become an "it's unpleasant to lose" avoidance strategy - if playing "for real", maybe that's to the bitter end.

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