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Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

pediatrics.aappublications.org

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Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#21

Post by humbledrone »

dminor14 wrote: post #10

Pretty disgusting, maybe we should drown them and burn them also to see how they react.

> Instead, the scientists designed a very small, rather dense, playhouse. It looked just like a normal kid's playhouse, except that it was the exact dimensions of the average home fridge. Not only that, the house was equipped with an infrared camera on the top, which took videos of the kid while they were inside, while at the same time keeping it dark, like it would be in a fridge with the door shut. It should also be noted that the scientists teamed up with a psychiatrist, a child psychologist, and the parents to agree on the length of time the child would be allowed to cry before they helped it out. Three minutes. [1]

Hmm, three minutes of discomfort in a dark playhouse doesn't seem quite as bad as drowning or being burned alive. Especially when you consider the deaths that might be avoided as a result of the research.

[1] http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2009/07/17/friday-wei...

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#22

Post by rotskoff »

201 children from 157 families. Ages 2,3,4,5. The "enclosure" was meant to look like a playhouse; some children were lured into it, but many wandered in on their own. It was 40x18X25 in. It was outfitted with a number of recording devices: video camera, infrared, sound.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#23

Post by JonnieCache »

slurgfest wrote: post #18
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #2

a higher rate of success being associated with fewer years of education attained by mother and father combined. Tell me more - is that statistically significant? Causes? Related to Reading age? The bit that worries me is the percentage of children who locked in the fridge just waited and cried.

Pure speculation: could be that poor kids were more likely to have dealt with similar problems or even just to have dealt with similar levels of suffering, and therefore respond with a little more short-term resilience. Not like anyone can do follow-ups on this research any more.

More idle speculation: self-reliance and/or initiative are inversely correlated with social class/socioeconomic status/whatever.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#24

Post by [deleted] »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #2

a higher rate of success being associated with fewer years of education attained by mother and father combined. Tell me more - is that statistically significant? Causes? Related to Reading age? The bit that worries me is the percentage of children who locked in the fridge just waited and cried.

[deleted]

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#25

Post by nitrogen »

ColinWright wrote: post #11
nitrogen wrote: post #7

It would be good to add (1958) to the title -- I doubt such an experiment would fly today, and this presents a fascinating look back in history both at the state of experimental ethics and the development of modern refrigerator doors. The only experience I have with fridges so old is the one that my grandfather rotated 90 degrees and buried in his yard, to serve as a root cellar. I think the door may have had an actu…

> It would be good to add (1958) to the title Won't fit in the 80 character limit.

Get rid of the word "young", perhaps?

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#26

Post by nitrogen »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #9
JonnieCache wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't fridges pretty airtight though? Isn't that the whole point here? If so, then crying loud and long is at best a hell of a bet. I'd be willing to bet that fridges are pretty good sound insulators. The inside is sort of suspended IIRC.

Put a microphone inside and outside the fridge. If the noise coming from inside the fridge is louder than the noise from outside the fridge, pop the hatch automatically. Not a viable solution for 1958x but today we are talking about a few dollars in electronics and an electromagnet.

You could probably use a single mic and a volume threshold, rather than a volume comparison with the outside, unless enough sound from the outside of the fridge gets to the internal microphone to set it off (e.g. during an earthquake or extremely loud party).

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#27

Post by nitrogen »

nitrogen wrote: post #7

It would be good to add (1958) to the title -- I doubt such an experiment would fly today, and this presents a fascinating look back in history both at the state of experimental ethics and the development of modern refrigerator doors. The only experience I have with fridges so old is the one that my grandfather rotated 90 degrees and buried in his yard, to serve as a root cellar. I think the door may have had an actu…

For some reason this post by Ihavenoname is [dead], but it is an interesting anecdote.

Ihavenoname 12 minutes ago | link [dead]

There were a frightening number of children that were trapped in the old refrigerators. They often used them as hiding places and could not get out until they were redesined They had latches and even when there were interior releases it was not obvious to a child how to open it when in the dark and with limited leverage. Even knowing a study like this would save lives I would find it hard to see it getting approved by modern ethics committees. It really says a lot about how our society has changes as anything. The society is much less Unitarian in its ethics simply sounding suspect is enough to get rejected.

Ihavenoname: perhaps you accidentally double posted and deleted the wrong comment, or perhaps your comment five days ago about Google got flagged by an unhappy Google fan.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#28

Post by davidw »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #9
JonnieCache wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't fridges pretty airtight though? Isn't that the whole point here? If so, then crying loud and long is at best a hell of a bet. I'd be willing to bet that fridges are pretty good sound insulators. The inside is sort of suspended IIRC.

Put a microphone inside and outside the fridge. If the noise coming from inside the fridge is louder than the noise from outside the fridge, pop the hatch automatically. Not a viable solution for 1958x but today we are talking about a few dollars in electronics and an electromagnet.

Not a viable solution today: the problem is not fridges in active use in houses, it's fridges in people's backyards/dumps/barns/whatever where they are no longer plugged into anything.

More information on the problem:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2586/is-it-impossib...

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#29

Post by slurgfest »

JonnieCache wrote: post #5
troels wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they cry loud enough, it may not be the worst strategy.

Aren't fridges pretty airtight though? Isn't that the whole point here? If so, then crying loud and long is at best a hell of a bet. I'd be willing to bet that fridges are pretty good sound insulators. The inside is sort of suspended IIRC.

Crying loud is a pretty good mammal trick for most situations other than an imminent predator-grabbing - being trapped in an airtight refrigerator is definitely an evolutionary edge case.
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