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

Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

pediatrics.aappublications.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 71 posts

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

#61

Post by scarmig »

ColinWright wrote: post #33
nitrogen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get rid of the word "young", perhaps?

Now too late, but even so, given the moderators' tendencies to change titles so they match exactly the article, even when the supplied title is significantly more informative, I've stopped trying to be helpful with titles.

That (informal?) policy drives me fucking nuts.

I had one submission awhile back with a fairly informative title for an article about the legal issues AirBnB was running into. The mods, in their everlasting wisdom, decided to change the title to match the article's. What was it?

"DIY B&B"

Oh, yeah, that's descriptive. I wouldn't say I have a huge flair for titles or anything, but mine was (a) not terrible and (b) definitely more useful in getting the point across. Rage.

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

#62

Post by brittohalloran »

humbledrone wrote: post #21
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 b…

Three minutes of screaming in a confined space for a claustrophobic person is an eternity. This would never fly today.

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

#63

Post by brittohalloran »

roel_v wrote: post #54
sp332 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not 3 minutes, it's 3 minutes after they're so emotionally worked up they're crying. Finding out that your parents heard you but just ignored you is going to make you trust them less. (How do you define "emotionally healthy"? I grew up in a really nice home but my brother and I still have some problems.)

Do you have children? Children cry as an expression of many things, because they can't express themselves in other ways yet. You make it sound like once children get to a state of crying, they must have endured a lot already, which is not true. Allowing children to cry for several minutes at a time before going to check up on them is a pedagogically sound and normal technique for teaching children to go to sleep by t…

(two girls) Being upset in your familiar comfortable bed is a very different thing than accidentally trapping yourself in a tiny strange dark box and physically struggling to get out. Very different chemical things happening in your brain in those two situations.

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

#64

Post by snowwrestler »

brittohalloran wrote: post #62
humbledrone wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 b…

Three minutes of screaming in a confined space for a claustrophobic person is an eternity. This would never fly today.

I don't see why it wouldn't, if the parents are fully informed and consent.

The children were not in any physical danger and were not harmed. I'm not aware of any research that shows that 3 minutes of panic for a 5 year old causes lasting psychological damage. Toddlers experience transient sobbing panic on a fairly regular basis for a variety of reasons. If they are comforted by supportive parents they are fine.

Since this study occurred in 1958, one could presumably find these kids today and see how they are doing. I'd wager that they are no worse-adjusted than would be expected of an average child of that era.

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

#65

Post by cabalamat »

ColinWright wrote: post #38
vacri wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is: these days you wouldn't need a study. All you'd need to do is cause a PR ruckus and it would change. The issue with ethics in this experiment is not "the researchers might be creepy people", it's that it violates the basic idea that human experimentation on non-consenting people shouldn't cause harm (which includes negative emotions like fear, embarassment, etc). Sometimes such experimentation does get…

> ... just change the fridge doors. That's what this research was intended to answer: change the fridge doors to what? At the time there was no such thing as magnetic strips. To seal the fridge you had a rubber seal, and then you had to close the door with significant force. The handles were effectively levers so an ordinary person could provide enough force to open them, and fridges were advertised with elephants st…

> Using 1958 technology - how? In what way? To what?

Have a lever on the inside too. So that people could see it, use luminescent paint. Both technologies existed in 1958.

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

#66

Post by robotresearcher »

maked00 wrote: post #47

Since it was in the 50's we really have no idea just how statistically accurate this study is. For example, they may not have had a equal spread of income levels. Most of the participants may have been poor and there may have been only one or two high income families involved. Such a small sample would not give reliable results. However if the study did have an accurate cross sample of incomes, then perhaps the resul…

> "Since it was in the 50's"

Plenty of first-class science and engineering was done in the 1950s and before. The 50s produced hydrogen bombs, supersonic aircraft, and great advances in chemotherapy and computer science, for example. They were quite capable of doing an empirical study to a standard we would recognize.

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

#67

Post by pacaro »

cabalamat wrote: post #65
ColinWright wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... just change the fridge doors. That's what this research was intended to answer: change the fridge doors to what? At the time there was no such thing as magnetic strips. To seal the fridge you had a rubber seal, and then you had to close the door with significant force. The handles were effectively levers so an ordinary person could provide enough force to open them, and fridges were advertised with elephants st…

> Using 1958 technology - how? In what way? To what? Have a lever on the inside too. So that people could see it, use luminescent paint. Both technologies existed in 1958.

In a fit of awesomeness, the luminescent paint used by a 50's refrigerator designer would be radioactive - now preserving your food for even longer...

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

#68

Post by DEinspanjer »

cabalamat wrote: post #65
ColinWright wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... just change the fridge doors. That's what this research was intended to answer: change the fridge doors to what? At the time there was no such thing as magnetic strips. To seal the fridge you had a rubber seal, and then you had to close the door with significant force. The handles were effectively levers so an ordinary person could provide enough force to open them, and fridges were advertised with elephants st…

> Using 1958 technology - how? In what way? To what? Have a lever on the inside too. So that people could see it, use luminescent paint. Both technologies existed in 1958.

Sounds great, if done without testing, it would have had only a moderate effect:

When presented with a gadget that could be grasped, some (18%) pulled, a few (9%) pushed, but 40% tried to turn it like a doorknob.

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

#69

Post by DEinspanjer »

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.

Yeah, that was the big thing that made me wonder WTF. Really wish there was more data on that part of it.

Wonder if any of the original experiment data or executors are still around.. :)

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

#70

Post by pessimizer »

sp332 wrote: post #43
pessimizer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite the Tuskegee Experiment.

This isn't the worst thing ever, therefore it's not bad? Apt handle, pessimizer.

No, it's not bad because it's not bad. Granted, it's not a detailed argument - but I'm not very concerned about a 3 year old feeling helpless and alone for up to 3 minutes.
Post reply on HN