Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Young children would rather explore than get rewards

news.osu.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 244 posts

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#191

Post by yummypaint »

adrianN wrote: post #24
kqr wrote: post #4

For anyone interested in this type of stuff, I can recommend reading Drive . Briefly, human behaviour can be motivated for extrinsic and intrinsic reasons. The rewards in this article are extrinsic motivators. Exploring is rewarding in an intrinsic way; it is a strive towards autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In adults (and in older children) applying extrinsic motivators kills intrinsic motivation. Once the extrinsic…

I often see criticism of the school system like yours. I think it comes from a perspective of a fairly intelligent, self-motivated individual, probably from a family that valued education. However many children lack one or more of those factors. For them the intrinsic motivation is to play video games all day, or talk to their friends, or smoke weed. There is no intrinsic motivation for most children to learn all the…

For them the intrinsic motivation is to play video games all day, or talk to their friends, or smoke weed. There is no intrinsic motivation for most children to learn all the subjects taught in school.

This is a false dichotomy that gets reinforced everywhere to the detriment of all students. There is no reason those things should be mutually exclusive, but we make it so by the power of our collective expectations.

Lots of people are discouraged and pushed away from their areas of interest because they aren't seen as fitting a stereotype or mold. Some people never even get a chance to discover that they have academic interests, and are effectively placed on a "remedial" track from the time they enter the school system because of their background. The messaging is that they cannot succeed without external motivation, which sets them up for failure.

On the other side of the coin, it also contributes to the unhealthy pressures advanced students face. Building rigid assumptions into the education system about how students spend their leisure time is part of what kills diversity.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#192

Post by germinalphrase »

chmod775 wrote: post #168
macspoofing wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative (usually ending in pain) Pain is a very good teacher. Letting children hurt themselves and learn from that (within reason, obviously) is not a bad thing.

Especially since while you're small, falling hurts a lot less. It's surprising to me how people consistently try to discourage traits in children which they at the same time glorify in adults. I suppose considering how much effort society puts into raising meager people, it's only right we glorify those who manage to manage to grow as a person regardless.

I’ve also noticed that my toddler falls “better” than most adults do. If you ever take up judo, early on they need to teach you to fall correctly so you avoid injury. My toddler does most of it be instinct which is cool.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#193

Post by blobbers »

Isn't this the children solving the multi armed bandit problem?

In a child's mind, they haven't yet fully decided how things behave and react, so they are willing to try things to see if they've changed (because in fact often they do in their own mental models, as well as the resolution of those models.

If you think of it as a regression tree, their models start out fairly shallow and then slowly get deeper as they age. That's a square thing. That's a book. That's a book about animals. That's a book about marine animals. That's a book about marine animals that I like. That's a book about whales.

In trying to solve the multi armed bandit, they're willing to explore to try to find better rewards because in their own world there are often better rewards.

If the game shifted to having a different alien be the best one half way through the game, I'd be curious how quickly the more maturely cognitive kids did. It's possible that becoming fixated on something (the way adults are) can ultimately limit your abilities in a game. In adulthood, "creative" solutions can sometimes be better than more "standard" solutions, but incur more risk.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#194

Post by entropicdrifter »

atoav wrote: post #188
brnt wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find those motivations for children who seem to have none at all?

That's not true. They all have some sort of thing that drives them. For some it might be football, for others it is making up stories, for yet others it is coming up with drawings of weird mad-professor like castles, fashion, a certain genre of music, food, cooking, decorating things you name it. The one kid that I ever encountered which I didn't find something that I could leverage to get their intrinsic motivation…

I'd imagine the authoritarian route isn't even all that much easier in terms of total effort expended, it's just easier from a mental perspective because it's so formulaic.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#195

Post by andrei_says_ »

kqr wrote: post #11
andrei_says_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards, a thick tome dedicated to the research and reasons of how and why punishment and rewards don’t teach what’s intended and don’t motivate as intended... and how extrinsic motivation kills intrinsic motivation. Withdrawing rewards is punishment so both are really the same. Human beings are not designed to be trained like rats and birds, regardless of what many believe. If your kid…

Punished by Rewards is in my reading heap but rather far down. Maybe I should prioritise it slightly higher. > Human beings are not designed to be trained like rats and birds, regardless of what many believe. I'd just want to add that according to Drive , training humans like rats and birds work great... If blind obedience, conformity, and minimal quality is something you're looking for -- which many factory line typ…

They are consistent... controlling people with punishment and rewards works, as long as the incentive is present, at the cost of destroying intrinsic motivation. It also changes the relationship, positioning the “manager” as a prison guard of sorts and tying them to that role.

It teaches its subjects to do the thing but only if they get the reward and never otherwise. To comply, but only when watched, and to act in secret when fulfilling their true needs.

His book focuses on parenting and one can see how punishment and rewards impact this most important relationship and negatively impact intrinsic motivation in exchange for the illusion of control.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#196

Post by munificent »

macspoofing wrote: post #164
irjustin wrote: post #96

Overall, this style is what Montessori-schools of teaching believe and how they operate. Essentially a self-exploratory based learning style. There's lots of benefit in letting kids simply explore. As a parent, I find I have to stop myself from pushing my child to the 'best' result and let them be. That it's okay to pick a less optimal solution. Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative (…

>Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative (usually ending in pain) Pain is a very good teacher. Letting children hurt themselves and learn from that (within reason, obviously) is not a bad thing.

I was hanging out with a friend who is also parent. As happens pretty often, the kids are all off somewhere else getting into trouble. Eventually, one starts wailing. My friend looks at me and says, "Ah, the sound of learning."

I always tell my wife is that my goal is not to keep the kids from getting hurt, just to keep them from getting maimed.

It's not just that pain is a good teacher, though it is. There is an even more vital lesson that the kids need to learn. "I can handle pain." They need to see themselves survive and push through difficulty because I believe witnessing their own resilience is the foundation of not just good self-esteem, but strong self-esteem.

In the US today, we're expected to raise our children like hothouse flowers. We get them to blossom by creating a maximally nurturing environmennt and shielding them from all possible adversity. That's maybe a good strategy if they can be shielded for the rest of their lives, but unlike orchids, eventually our kids will have to leave the greenhouse. They need to be able to handle what's out there and not wilt.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#197

Post by gowld »

germinalphrase wrote: post #192
chmod775 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since while you're small, falling hurts a lot less. It's surprising to me how people consistently try to discourage traits in children which they at the same time glorify in adults. I suppose considering how much effort society puts into raising meager people, it's only right we glorify those who manage to manage to grow as a person regardless.

I’ve also noticed that my toddler falls “better” than most adults do. If you ever take up judo, early on they need to teach you to fall correctly so you avoid injury. My toddler does most of it be instinct which is cool.

Toddlers are so far more spherical than adults

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#198

Post by nostrademons »

irjustin wrote: post #96

Overall, this style is what Montessori-schools of teaching believe and how they operate. Essentially a self-exploratory based learning style. There's lots of benefit in letting kids simply explore. As a parent, I find I have to stop myself from pushing my child to the 'best' result and let them be. That it's okay to pick a less optimal solution. Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative (…

> I know my job as a parent is to guide while keeping them safe at the same time letting exploration happen, but man sometimes it's just so hard. For example, letting my child explore while walking home can make a 5 minute walk take 10, 15 minutes longer.

As we were putting our 2-year-old to sleep last night, my wife was commenting, "Remember how last year, when we read him a book, it would take all of 3 minutes and then we'd be done?" It now takes about 2-3 minutes per page, and can be 20-30 minutes to get through a 12-page book. In the meantime, for every object on the page he's like "What's this?" "What's it doing?" "No snake?" "It a green one!" "They put the duck in the cart!" "Where going?"

Also amazing how early the desire to make up stories and explain why things are the way they are appears. The drive to make sense of the world appears to be innately human, and comes out at a young age.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#199

Post by cyberlurker »

fxtentacle wrote: post #32

While the study classifies it as exploration and claims an intrinsic reward that will die out later in life, I would describe the behavior as novelty-seeking. I'd wager that for adults, a game on a screen is just not new enough. But if you'd give adult males a choice of which female to undress, I'm pretty sure they would value "exploration" very highly again. In a similar vain, when smartphones were new, the adult po…

Let me just be the one to say your choice of topic for exploration is incredibly cringeworthy in 2020. Also inaccurate for some parts of the adult male population. Use a better example next time.

Re: Young children would rather explore than get rewards

#200

Post by kcolford »

cyberlurker wrote: post #199
fxtentacle wrote: post #32

While the study classifies it as exploration and claims an intrinsic reward that will die out later in life, I would describe the behavior as novelty-seeking. I'd wager that for adults, a game on a screen is just not new enough. But if you'd give adult males a choice of which female to undress, I'm pretty sure they would value "exploration" very highly again. In a similar vain, when smartphones were new, the adult po…

Let me just be the one to say your choice of topic for exploration is incredibly cringeworthy in 2020. Also inaccurate for some parts of the adult male population. Use a better example next time.

Maybe you find it cringeworthy, but I find it on topic and very relatable. The role of a speaker is to make their material easy to digest for their audience. For this audience in particular, I would argue that this example is statistically likely to resonate with most of them. So your parent commenter is strongly incentivized to use this example and conduct themselves this way, so of course they did so.

I don't think your comment contributes much to the conversation. If anything I feel it stifles the conversation. If you had shared that the parent's comment made you uncomfortable then that is a contribution that we could explore. Instead you decide to decree from the top of your high horse that his speech wasn't acceptable. I don't like what you did one bit, and I think you did it just to make other people uncomfortable and put yourself in a position of power over them.

Post reply on HN