New research suggests that when children ask "what's that?" They may want to know more than the name of the object, perhaps, even, what its function is
Eli Ben David (translation)
In the way that an electronic eye simultaneously reveals and hides key points of an image, new research suggests that children may be asking for a more detailed answer than the simple question might indicate.
Adults usually assume that when children ask "what is this?" In relation to a certain object, they simply ask for a name, something to label, to differentiate the object in the rapidly maturing world. The research examines possibilities that when children present this type of question they are actually asking to know the function of the object and not just its name. These findings were recently published in the Psychological Science Journal, by Deborah Kamler Nelson, Morgan Holt and Louisa Chan Egan, of Swarthmore College, a journal of the American Psychological Society.
The study divided two-, three- and four-year-olds into two groups, and let the children in each group ask about unfamiliar objects. In one group answer questions only with the name of the object. In the other group, the children answered in too much detail, meaning that the function of the object was also provided. Regardless of age, let all the children from both groups continue to ask about different objects but the answers they received were only the name of the object. The result was that children who were in the group where the function of the object was also given seemed more satisfied with the answer.
Furthermore, children from the group that received only the name of the object tended to reformulate their question during the study period in an attempt to extract more information about the function of the object. These results may suggest that young children may be interested in and even able to differentiate between objects by more than just superficial sorting.
"Psychological Science" ranks among the top ten psychology journals and is recognized as influential by the Institute for Scientific Information.
The American Psychological Society advocates research-based science for the public good.
The full article (in PDF format) is here
For information on the Psychological'Kel Science website
