Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by derefr » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 6:37 PM UTC

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.

> I'm trying to figure out how to show him the "move N places forward" mechanic where N is the number on the die.

Maybe start with hopscotch (the regular kind with where you toss an object into a square, but with clearly numbered squares), telling them each time the number of the square they're on, the number of the square they're heading to, and the number of hops they'll do, before they do them. After a while, they'll get an understanding of how the numbers on the squares relate to what you're saying, and maybe even a vague intuition for subtraction.

Eventually, you can replace the thrown object with a rolled die (I suggest a big soccer-ball-sized die they can see from far away, with numbered faces instead of pips)—whose roll indicates how many spaces they should move rather than the space they should move to—and keep playing the same game.

Once they get that, then they're ready to play board games.

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

#72

Post by ryanklee » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 6:41 PM UTC

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.

Try "Animal Upon Animal" by HABA.[0] It's an excellent game for kids exactly that young. Very simple stacking game. I highly recommend it. It'll teach turn taking and goal oriented thinking.

http://a.co/bJ8syTL[0]

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

#73

Post by derefr » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 6:46 PM UTC

jonex wrote: post #30

zaroth wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One experimenter gave accurate clues; the other gave inaccurate ones.... But for half of the children the game was rigged so that ultimately they would find the hidden objects. So one adult was always giving bad advice and one was always giving good advice. But in half the games it was rigged so the child always found the toy even if they looked in the wrong places. The advice from the adults was still always bad and…

But how can advice for winning a game be either bad or good if you will win whatever you do? That's the part I don't understand.

Perhaps, in the "win whatever you do" case, the item is originally placed somewhere, and the good advice really does relate to that place—so there's a way to win "authentically." And then, if the child never searches that place, then the item is moved—to a place unrelated to the clues—so that they will find it.

The advice was "good advice" in the sense of "if you had followed the advice, you would have found the item before the taking-pity-on-you time limit." But it's not "good advice" in the sense of it having any relation to where the item was ultimately found—and therefore it can't be inferred to have been good advice just from the evidence the child has at that point.

On the other hand, if the game is played iteratively (like an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma), it would eventually become clear (presuming the child managed to find the item by themselves some of the time) that there is this "taking-pity-on-you time limit", and that some of the advice has a correlation to where the item is before that time limit. The child would likely intuit the "taking-pity-on-you" moment as the true loss condition of the game, and become upset when it happened, just as if they had been told they lost.

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

#74

Post by contingencies » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

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.

My 2.5 year old did my dice rolling in Trivial Pursuit last night (1970s retro Australian edition). I just made a big thing of showing her the number on the die, reading it aloud, then moving the piece that many spaces while counting up. She is interested because she seems to see the social significance of the dice throw within the game environment, but not fully aware of the movement options/significance. That's OK. Using numbers at all is good at this age. I wonder at what cognitive level children interpret randomness, such as dice throws.

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

#75

Post by senko » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 7:10 PM UTC

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.

We bought Orchard by Haba for our 2yo and she absolutely loved it, still plays it sometimes 2yrs later, and it motivated her interest in board games in general.

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

#76

Post by exhilaration » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 7:30 PM UTC

senko wrote: post #75

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.

We bought Orchard by Haba for our 2yo and she absolutely loved it, still plays it sometimes 2yrs later, and it motivated her interest in board games in general.

Thank you, I've never heard of this game but the Amazon reviews look great. Do you have any other board games recommendations for 3-5 year olds?

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

#77

Post by ldjb » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

The article doesn't explain the experiment very well, which has caused confusion for myself and other commenters here. Having read the actual research paper, I'll try to outline how the experiment works, as I understand it:

Children were shown a video on a laptop featuring two containers. There would either be a helpful person or an unhelpful person who secretly puts a toy in one of the containers. The helpful person would then indicate which container they had put the toy into (either by pointing to the container or by lifting the containers to reveal the toy). Contrary to what the article says, the unhelpful person simply did not offer any sort of hint. The child would then be asked to select the container the toy was in.

I hope that clears things up.

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

#78

Post by vic-traill » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 9:00 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #44

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #3

Solution: play something that has essentially zero strategy, where who wins is close to random. Like Ludo or Yahtzee. My daughter often wins at Ludo, but it's not because I let her. She also often loses.

Another option is a game where you're both playing against "something" but not really against one another. For instance in Scrabble, your opponent is really the language and your knowledge of it, rather than the other person. Plus luck, of course. Likewise the violin. There are "levels" to reach, and competitions, but ultimately it's down to you and the music and the instrument. The point where my daughter surpassed…

The musical part of your reply is interesting.

As I read it, the idea occurred to me to learn a new instrument along with your child. My experience is that kids learn to play an instrument faster than an adult; even given that, they'll only progress along with you by practising, and it's a pretty cool way to spend time with your kid.

Thanks for the inspiration.

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

#79

Post by gojomo » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

I suspect "children" here may be a distraction: under the same artificial constraints, adult players might show the exact same behavior.

From the article (and abstract), it's hard to imagine a game where the 'bad' advice is really 'bad' if (1) the player always trusts it; and (2) they then always succeed. In such a case, the forced-success may retroactively make the bad-advice 'good'. (At best, maybe the bad advice forced a slower completion? But that requires assuming some more complicated game.)

From playing the game of interpreting this article, I have concluded that neither the article author nor the researchers (via their original abstract) can be trusted to summarize such research in sufficient detail for unambiguous interpretation.

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

#80

Post by secabeen » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #64

kosma wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. ;)

Yeah fair enough, I was just wondering about the future. How did you build up to a full board game with your kid? What were the phases? 1. Succeed in not eating the dice 2. ??? 3. Play a game of Sorry! within the rules.

The intermediate step here is what Candyland does.