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Posts Tagged ‘toddler’

Toddler Sense of Justice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 3, 2015| Leave a Comment »

At the NY Times, Sindya N. Bhanoo notes some cool research on young children’s sense of fairness.

“Children as young as age 3 will intervene on behalf of a victim, reacting as if victimized themselves, scientists have found.

“With toys, cookies and puppets, Keith Jensen, a psychologist at the University of Manchester in England, and his colleagues [Katrin Riedl, Josep Call, and Michael Tomasello] tried to judge how much concern 3- and 5-year-olds had for others, and whether they had a sense of so-called restorative justice.

“In one experiment, when one puppet took toys or cookies from another puppet, children responded by pulling a string that locked the objects in an inaccessible cave. When puppets took objects directly from the children themselves, they responded in the same way.

“ ‘The children treated these two violations equally,’ said Dr. Jensen, a co-author of the study published in the journal Current Biology.

“In another experiment, when an object was lost or stolen, children tried to right the wrong by returning the object to the puppet it belonged to.

“ ‘Their sense of justice is victim-focused rather than perpetrator focused,’ Dr. Jensen said.” More at the NY Times, here.

The abstract for “Restorative Justice in Children” is posted at Cell.com.

Photo: Keith Jensen
Two puppets used in a study that aimed to learn how much concern young children have for others. 

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Toddlers: Memory Like an Elephant

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2014| 3 Comments »

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou never know what you’ll find at Andrew Sullivan’s blog.

Today he notes research on the memory of toddlers. A new study has demonstrated that three-year-olds have memories of  seeing someone once, back when they were one.

Danish researcher Osman “Kingo and his team first renewed contact with parents and their children who’d taken part in an earlier study when the children were age one. That earlier research involved the infant children interacting with one of two researchers for 45 minutes – either a Scandinavian-Caucasian man or a Scandinavian-African man.

“Now two years on, 50 of these parents and children – the latter now aged three – were invited back to the exact same lab (hopefully cueing their earlier memories). Here the children were shown two simultaneous 45-second videos side by side. One video was a recording of the researcher – either the Scandinavian-Caucasian or Scandinavian-African man – interacting with them two years earlier; the other video showed the other researcher (the one they hadn’t met) interacting with a different child in the exact same way. …

“The children spent significantly more time looking at the video that featured the researcher they’d never met. … This result provides strong evidence that the children had some recognition of the researcher they’d met, and were drawn more strongly to look at the unfamiliar researcher.”

More at Andrew Sullivan, here, and at Research Digest at the British Psychological Society, here.

I am especially delighted that there’s a bit of proof for what I have long insisted was true. (No one ever believes that I remember taking my first steps.)

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We Are Born Wanting to Help

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 3, 2012| 5 Comments »

John sent me this heavenly video from a Public Broadcasting show called “The Human Spark.” Do watch it. It isn’t long.

It highlights research with both chimps and toddlers, showing what is apparently an innate impulse to help others. Interestingly, whereas the chimp will pass you something you are reaching for and stop at that, a toddler will go above and beyond — and seem to enjoy it.

All of which suggests to me that if you want to be around people who are truly human, hang out with the ones who like to help others.

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Playdate

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 3, 2011| 4 Comments »

Had an awesome playdate with my grandson and his parents today.

John and I pushed the stroller to a playground that has lots of climbing things and outgrown toys that families donate. On the way, we passed a neighbor’s yard. Smoke was curling up behind the fence. The three-year-old twins were roasting green coffee beans in an old popcorn maker, their dad watching. The children are apparently quite skillful aficionados and know the difference between “first crack” and “second crack,” a coffee-roasting concept that was news to me. They gave a jar of roasted beans to John to take home, with instructions to let the beans breathe overnight.

At the playground, there were many dads with toddlers. Only two moms. It seems to be a Saturday-morning phenomenon — proof that Suzanne’s high school friend Mike was onto something when he founded Playground Dad.

We also had fun playing in the pup tent that had temporarily taken over John’s dining room. And we danced. My grandson will dance at the drop of a hat. You don’t need to play music — singing a cappella or rattling a jar of freshly roasted coffee beans to a good beat will get him going. His dad took break dancing as a kid. Also tap. And his mom is a super dancer. So there you go.

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I Like the Way You Walk

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2011| 4 Comments »

I like to sing this old blues song to toddlers, “I like the way you walk, I like the way you walk, You my babe, I got my eyes on you.”

I was thinking about that song recently when a relative who’s an orthopedist said my toddler grandson walks just like his mother.

The doctor is a connoisseur of walks, which he says are like signatures. I believe him. I often recognize people from afar by their walk. And in detective stories, any perp who wants to do a thorough job of disguising himself puts a pebble in a shoe to throw off his walk.

When I read an article in the Boston Globe indicating that most of us walk all wrong, I thought, “Is it a good idea to change your signature?” Look what happened when left-handed children were forced to become right-handed.

Actors can learn to speak in a new way for a role. Newsmen can get rid of their accents. But if something is a deep part of who you are, can you change it, even to save your joints?

Here is the article that caught my eye.

“[Cara] Lewis studies the way people walk and believes that if they can learn how to move properly, taking the stress off their hips, they may avoid the injuries and joint deterioration that often lead to a hip replacement down the road. …

“ ‘They may not be pushing with their foot as much as they should be,’ Lewis said, ‘or they may be taking too long of a step, so their leg ends up far behind them.’ …

“The plastic and metal robotic device she designed, which is strapped around the pelvis and thighs, weighs about 11 pounds and is powered by an air compressor attached to each thigh — think bicycle pump — that is turned on by the researcher at the precise point when a person walking on a treadmill needs some correction. For instance, the compressor can exert pressure on the front of the thigh to shorten a stride.”

Just thinking about it makes me want to lie down.

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