Before I was a neuroscience guy, and then an animal behavior guy, I started out as a developmental guy. (Hey, it makes sense to me, but don't ask me to explain it...)
Piaget's original writings go to great pains to demonstrate that, within reasonable variation, the form of the question doesn't seem to matter much. That was part of his evidence that he was tapping into something internal to the child rather than the demand characteristics of the task. He took great pains to ask the questions in varied but neutral ways, and tried to lead children to the "correct" answer (even though he was more interested in reasoning than answers). Piaget's writings correspond with my own experience: Sometimes you can coax, for example, a concrete-operational answer out of a preoperational child, but it shatters under any kind of challenge. Even asking "why?" to a coaxed answer elicits "I dunno, but that's the answer you seem to want..." responses. More recent studies have, of course, shown that children often have an intuitive/nonverbal sense of a concept (e.g., object permanence or conservation) that they can express behaviorally but not verbally, but that wasn't the subject of the question. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael J. Renner Department of Psychology West Chester University West Chester, PA 19383 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Telephone: 610-436-2925 Fax: 610-436-2846 Office Hours, Sp 2002: Tue/Thur 8-9:30 am, Weds 2-4 pm "The path of least resistance is always downhill." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
