MixedNuts comments on Talking to Children: A Pre-Holiday Guide

Comment author: malthrin 21 December 2011 10:17:13PM * 12 points [-]

Regarding "convincing" children of things: this AI koan is relevant.

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.

“I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied.

“Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.

“I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

“Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.

“So that the room will be empty.”

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Comment author: fiddlemath 21 December 2011 04:41:23AM 9 points [-]

I strongly suspect that what's going on with "people who talk to children like they're adults" is that they talk to children like they're people.

Strongly seconded. I've long been certain that this is the reason I get along so easily with that kids older than about 4. I listen to what they're saying, ask for more information about things they're interested in, and enthuse about things I'm interested in. In general, I talk to them like I'd talk to friendly acquaintances.

From what I recall of childhood, people who aren't obviously disingenuous towards kids are rare, and precious to kids.

Comment author: David_Gerard 21 December 2011 04:09:08PM * 3 points [-]

I strongly suspect that what's going on with "people who talk to children like they're adults" is that they talk to children like they're people.

Anecdote: sure works for me. I have zero personal interest in sticker dolly books or drawing pictures of dinosaurs, but my 4yo sure does and she lights up when I participate in her projects in a way that takes her interests seriously. We are blatantly and consciously encouraging her interests in art and music, and she's getting commendations at school for it. She's even allowed to touch mum's Wacom graphics tablet ...

Comment author: [deleted] 20 December 2011 11:07:29PM 10 points [-]

Children are input/output machines. What you put in, is what you get out. This is especially true of the younger ages. For example, an older child, say a 10 year old, already has 10 years of input going in, so it is much harder to work against all that previous input, than with a 3 year old.

Children's beliefs are being formed by their environment all the time. Every waking second, every personal interaction, is forming them into their future selves. You can either acknowledge this, and use it to your advantage to help them be the best future self they can be, OR you can say that it is "manipulative" and instead leave their formation up to chance.

For example, if I convince a child they like helping me cook, it certainly isn't for my benefit. Cooking takes three times as long, and causes more mess and trouble if you have a child "helping" you. You convince them they like cooking so that they grow up having a skill that is needed for coping in the world.

Also, in real life, the cartoon I convinced my charge that she like was "Higglytown Heroes", which I like because it shows that everyone in town is important in their own way. It was just less embarassing to admit that I like Kim Possible (which I like, but actually encourage kids away from) than that I like Higglytown Heroes. So yeah....not noticing my own signalling attempts, FTL.

Do you know if the liking is sincere?

IMO, telling them what they like/dislike does actually change their liking/disliking of an item/task, so long as that item was neutral to begin with. You can get them to LOVE something they used to LIKE, but not something they used to DISLIKE.

Comment author: MixedNuts 20 December 2011 11:45:57PM 5 points [-]

Yeah, I did say that children were designed to work like that. Your dichotomy is false, though; adults influence each others' opinions all the time. I'm significantly less bothered "This show is great" (it will have greater influence than on an adult, but that may be a feature) than by "You love this show" (a lie).

telling them what they like/dislike does actually change their liking/disliking

Okay. What measure did you use? (Hmm, I wonder if self-image consistency has a large effect in young children.)

My big problem is that children do work differently from adults, but there doesn't appear to be a model for treating them like unusual people. It's like if they were lots of blind people around, and most seeing people treated them like noisy decoration, used their sight to boss them around, refused to talk to them about visual phenomena, told them lies about what they saw to shut them up, treated sightedness as absolute authority, and found laughable the idea they could have valuable opinions, but the only sighted people who didn't just ignored the blindness instead of occasionally telling them "There's fresh paint on this bench".

Comment author: pjeby 22 December 2011 07:04:52PM 9 points [-]

My big problem is that children do work differently from adults, but there doesn't appear to be a model for treating them like unusual people.

You might be interested in the Continuum Concept, then. The book describes the childcare practices of the Yequana and other indigenous cultures that treat children as if they're differently-abled people rather than an underclass.

On first reading the continuum stuff, it's easy to get caught up in the parts that have to do with physical contact, feeding, etc. of babies, as that's where a lot of the discussion is. But the actual idea of "continuum" (at least as I see it), is that basically these cultures treated children as if they were "real people" from birth... as if they're full members of the community, with the same needs for contact, participation, respect, trust, belonging, etc. as full-grown adults -- and vice versa. (That is, adults aren't deprived of play, empathy, touch, etc. either.)

Even as much as Eliezer speaks and writes about the subject, it's still a bit of culture shock to see how fundamentally wrong our own culture is about the treatment of children, in ways that never occurred to me, even as a child.

For example, the whole permissive vs. strict dichotomy is irrelevant to a continuum culture: both permissiveness and strictness are too child-centric from the continuum viewpoint, because they both operate on an underlying assumption that children have to be treated differently from "normal" people, and that they'll break or some other bad thing will happen if you don't do something special to "fix" them (e.g. spoil them, punish them, spend time with them, whatever).

Comment author: TimS 21 December 2011 12:38:20AM 0 points [-]

What measure did you use

Increase and decrease of frequency of behavior (i.e. does the child ask for the preferred object more or less often) seems like a plausible candidate.

Comment author: MixedNuts 21 December 2011 12:51:02AM 0 points [-]

No. If you have a self-image that says you like cooking you may cook a lot more without enjoying it more.

Comment author: TimS 21 December 2011 12:54:02AM 0 points [-]

I thought the question was how to measure the effect of the intervention.

Comment author: fetidodor 21 December 2011 12:09:11AM * 1 point [-]

You can either acknowledge this, and use it to your advantage to help them be the best future self they can be, OR you can say that it is "manipulative" and instead leave their formation up to chance.

This doesn't sound right to me. I think you could find certain things "manipulative", and so look at specifically doing/saying things that weren't manipulative. For example, what if you told the children of their own bias, or you told them, "Don't believe what I say just because I tell you that you believe it." I'm sure your intentions are correct, but I would think the interaction could be consistent with "ordinary adult interaction" with regards to manipulation and so on.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 December 2011 12:45:51AM * 24 points [-]

what if you told the children of their own bias

This might be useful at a certain age. But for younger children, that just isn't reasonable. They don't have the development to understand that. For example, here is the basic script of the "False Belief" Test, that shows a lack of Theory of Mind.

Tester: [presents crayon box] What do you think is inside?
Child (2-3 year old): Crayons!
Tester: [opens box. shows that there are birthday candles inside box] Oh, look! What is actually inside the box?
Child: birthday candles!
Tester: [closes box] Before I opened the box, what did you think was inside the box?
Child: Birthday candles!
Tester: Your mom is outside the room. If she came in, and we showed her this [closed] box, what would your Mom think was inside the box?
Child: Birthday candles!

So good luck getting them to actually understand cognitive biases!

what if... you told them, "Don't believe what I say just because I tell you that you believe it."

Then you are doing the exact same thing I am advocating for. You are manipulating their mind (by telling them what you want them to believe) to result in a positive outcome.

Comment author: lavalamp 21 December 2011 01:50:48AM 7 points [-]

Does the child respond that way because they have no theory of mind, or because they don't parse the questions well and are just hearing, "blah blah blah what's inside the box?" (this interpretation still supports your point, this is just something I always wonder about when I hear that chlidren have no theory of mind.)

Comment author: [deleted] 21 December 2011 02:34:03AM 14 points [-]

I would say that it is definitely that they do not have the cognitive/developmental abilities. There are MANY experiments, showing various fallacies at various ages. Here are some other examples:

Lack Conservation

Formal Operation

Comment author: lavalamp 21 December 2011 02:31:56PM 1 point [-]

I'd read about those things before, but the videos were still cool, thanks.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 21 December 2011 03:09:56AM -1 points [-]

Another possibility is a lack of sequencing events in time: if you're not separating "what I see right now" from "what I thought before" consistently, you're going to come up with funny answers.

Comment author: MixedNuts comment score below threshold [+] (14 children)

Comment author: Vaniver 21 December 2011 03:17:24AM * 4 points [-]

This test is crap.

Because it doesn't have a specificity of 1, or another reason? Even if we are judging the test based on just this datapoint, it seems to me the author has difficulty manipulating their mental model of others' minds, to the point where their inability to pass the Sally-Anne tests is informative.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 21 December 2011 03:55:10AM 2 points [-]

Because it works better as a test of language ability. People can model others' minds but get lost in the many clauses. (Higher levels increase difficulty by increasing number of clauses and difficulty of phrasing.)

This is common knowledge in the autistic community, but I hardly blame you for not knowing it. Most people don't, unless all their friends are autistic or Aspies.

Comment author: Vaniver 21 December 2011 04:50:28AM 3 points [-]

Because it works better as a test of language ability. People can model others' minds but get lost in the many clauses.

That sounds plausible, but how would you determine that it's language ability specifically that's causing the issue? Do they pass the basic Sally-Anne test ("Where will Sally look for her marble?") but fail more complicated versions? Do they pass clear versions but not wordy versions (passing "Where will Sally look for her marble?" but failing "Where would Sally tell us she believes the marble is?")?

It seems to me that language failure could be because of theory of mind failure. For example, if I'm trying to trick someone trying to trick me, what I think he thinks I think he thinks is an unconsciously constructed object in my mental model. Describing it is a little tricky because there's not a single word for it, but making predictions / planning actions based on it is not difficult. If someone doesn't have that in their mental model, but has to construct it, then it seems to me the first place they'll notice difficulty is parsing the question- they look inside for something with the tag "what I think he thinks I think he thinks," find nothing, and conclude they probably didn't hear / parse it correctly. But, this is speculation by a non-psychologist, and so evidence-driven opinions are more welcome.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 21 December 2011 06:31:37AM 1 point [-]

Yes, people who pass the basic test fail on tests with more complicated language structures. (Hint: when your test is so poorly-designed that you can't even be certain whether you're testing a concept that exists, and even given that you are, whether your test is testing it, the test is crap even if it's not biased against the people you purport to study.)

You have normal theory of mind, I would assume. This includes recursive theory of mind (I know you know I know). Do you think that you could still be confused by "Sally thinks that Harry thinks that Sally thinks that I think that Sally thinks that whatever" or something similar?

http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/daniel.nettle/liddlenettle.pdf Feel free to draw your own conclusions from an actual study using a theory of mind test. Here's a critique of it: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp3314609.html#3314609

This is a critique of the test in its usual usage, which isn't for neurologically normal three-year-olds.

Comment author: Vaniver 21 December 2011 05:48:42PM * 3 points [-]

when your test is so poorly-designed that you can't even be certain whether you're testing a concept that exists, and even given that you are, whether your test is testing it, the test is crap even if it's not biased against the people you purport to study.

It's not my test, and I can't comment on the certainty of people who devised it / administer it today, whose opinions I suspect are more informed than mine.

Do you think that you could still be confused by "Sally thinks that Harry thinks that Sally thinks that I think that Sally thinks that whatever" or something similar?

If spoken too quickly, sure. If the test were written (or spoken slowly), I think I would give the right answer to 6th order questions at least 90% of the time.

Here's a critique of it: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp3314609.html#3314609

The paper they link to (here) doesn't seem to be as strong as they present it in the post. I certainly agree that Baron-Cohen's claim that ToM can't be learned sounds wrong, unless he's arguing about brain structure rather than performance (that is, they can learn how to answer the questions correctly but never as easily as a neurotypical).

I also followed the citation trail to come across this paper, which included picture-based tests. An example: A green apple was placed in front of the subject and they were given a green marker (with red ink). They drew the apple someplace they couldn't see, and then the researcher put an identical red apple next to the green apple, then showed them their drawing, and asked "Which of these apples were you trying to draw?" and "When X enters the room, which apple will they think you were trying to draw?"

They tested normal 4 year-olds and deaf or autistic children (5 to 13, average age 9) on the false drawing task and a standard false belief task (what's in the box? Not what's on the label! What will X think is in the box? What did you think was in the box before I opened it?). The normals mostly passed the standard test and mostly failed the false drawing task; the deaf or autistic mostly failed the standard test and mostly passed the false drawing task. (Normal children of age average 9 were not tested; I presume they would mostly pass both tests.)

I now have a much better idea of what a non-verbal false belief test would look like, but I still think both varieties of test are useful at identifying ToM delays / deficiencies. That the normal 4 year olds do poorly on the pictorial false-belief tests suggests to me that it also is not just testing ToM, but something else as well.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 December 2011 02:27:24AM 5 points [-]

This test is crap

I don't at all see how you can think that is a constructive comment. Downvoting.

Also, the quote you posted is from a non-neurotypical author. Saying that people with Autism (or other disorders) have trouble with the tests does not mean that they tests are "crap." It more likely means that non-NTs have trouble with the concepts being tested, or with the testing methodologies.

Comment author: MixedNuts 21 December 2011 06:23:26AM 4 points [-]

Here's a person who obviously has theory of mind. She fails the test. Thus the test isn't testing whether someone has theory of mind.

Sure, maybe autistic people are special exceptions and the test usually works. But how do we know that? If we meet another false negative, we can always just add another special exception. (Well, "they were designed to justify saying autistics lack empathy" would explain why they would usually work but fail precisely for them.) Is there any group other than "people who go around saying 'I have theory of mind'" for whom we can verify the test result using another method?

Comment author: Emile 21 December 2011 09:47:17AM * 1 point [-]

Here's a person who obviously has theory of mind. She fails the test. Thus the test isn't testing whether someone has theory of mind.

The test succeeds at identifying something important that most people consider obvious, but that (surprisingly) some people fail at. Whether the something that the test measures is best called "theory of mind" is debatable, but I'm not sure there is a better name that would have stuck.

Having names for things is useful for thinking about them, as long as the focus is on the thing ("how could we call the thing this test measures"), and not on the name ("how could we design a test for the presence of a theory of mind?"). There's a delicate balance to reach between avoiding sneaking in connotations ("let's call it the Soul Test!"), and not having obscure names that don't suggest anything ("let's call it Plasmeomorphic Synchronism!"). I don't see any reason to think that they struck a particularly bad balance in this case.

Comment author: MixedNuts 21 December 2011 09:55:50AM -1 points [-]

daenerys is building an explanation for children's behaviour based on the premise that children can't have a model of the world that contains a person being wrong about a fact. I'm saying the test doesn't show that they can't.

Comment author: Emile 21 December 2011 10:48:17AM 1 point [-]

I was responding more to your "This test is crap" and subsequent explanations - though I'd consider "children can't have a model of the world that contains a person being wrong about a fact" as a reasonable first approximation for young enough children.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 21 December 2011 05:09:06AM * 5 points [-]

The tests in question were designed to make autistics fail and defined as tests of theory of mind. Anyone even vaguely familiar with this will be very annoyed and likely to say things like "this test is crap" because it's worthless at what it was ostensibly designed for.

Let me explain that again so you definitely understand why this makes people angry: Scientists wanted to be able to test autistics' theory of mind. Scientists designed a test autistics failed and neurotypicals passed. Scientists called it a test of theory of mind. Scientists defined theory of mind ability as passing this test. Scientists claimed that autistics lack empathy. Scientists also claimed that sociopaths lack empathy. Some people got a little confused here, leading to some terrible misconceptions that have caused a LOT of harm.

Do you want links to show this really happened this way?

Comment author: Suryc11 21 December 2011 09:22:55AM 3 points [-]

I have not heard this interpretation of the tests in question and I also did not have much prior knowledge of what exactly the tests hoped to prove and the subsequent conclusions, so I would greatly appreciate any links you could provide that may cause me to update my beliefs.

Specifically, I find both your explanation and the more mainstream explanation (something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test) plausible, so non-trivial evidence would lead me to put more certainty in a 'position'.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 December 2011 04:21:40PM 2 points [-]

so non-trivial evidence would lead me to put more certainty in a 'position'.

Because this particular test is getting a lot of (possibly earned) flak right now, I think it would be useful for people to actually SEE this test in action. I don't know if this is considered "trivial", but to me watching these tests is decent evidence that it is testing Theory of Mind as much as, if not more than, language skills.

Here is a TED talk on the subject. The entire talk is on the subject, but the part with the experiments is at 3:55- 7:30 . This experiment goes on to show that event though Theory of Mind is understood at age 4, that it's not until age 7 that it is used to decide moral judgements. (If the pirate ate the wrong sandwich because his got moved without his knowledge, is he being naughty/should he be punished?)

In this video the three year old is at the stage where she realizes that she USED to think that crayons were in the box, so she is starting to learn Theory of Mind. She still gets the second question wrong though. This is because this isn't a concept that one day you don't have, and all of a sudden you get it. Learning ToM is a process that takes time.

Finally, here is one that shows not understanding other's point of view.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 December 2011 04:36:12PM 1 point [-]

I don't know the history of these tests, so I will concede the point that perhaps these tests are used on non-NT's in a negative way, and that perhaps they were designed with some nefarious purpose of judging non-NTs.

However saying that because of this fact that these tests are "crap" is like saying that because people die in car accidents, that therefore cars are "crap". I think the test can be BOTH useful in demonstrating Theory of Mind that occurs in children 4 and under AND that the test can (possibly) be used in a negative way with non-NTs.

Perhaps to pass the test you need BOTH Theory of Mind, AND language skills at a 4 year-old level.

Even if it is just language skills, it still stands to reason to me, that if a child can't pass the test, that you won't be able to explain cognitive biases to them with any great success. (I am sure you could teach them the "Teacher's Passcode".) That is the reason I posted the test, and I think whether or not I am completely wrong on WHAT it tests, that the test still stands as good evidence supporting the claim I was making (can't teach them abstract material).

And I didn't even have to use this test specifically. I just wanted to show any example of the fact that children's minds don't operate on a developed enough level to yet understand abstract ideas.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with this will be very annoyed and likely to say things like "this test is crap"

You are using this as if it should EXCUSE the extremely rude grandparent comment, when instead it is an EXPLANATION. The two are not the same. You can explain bad behavior, without considering it an excuse.

Example- "I am late because I overslept" is an explanation not an excuse. "I am late because my car got a flat" is an acceptable excuse.

Though I didn't know the details, I already understood from the tone and the link, that the grandparent had some personal grudge/negative feelings towards the test in question. I assume it has been used on him/her to negative effect. I would guess, from your knowledge of this test, that it has also been used negatively on you or one of your loved ones. I am very sorry about this for the both of you. But that does not mean that it is an excuse to then leave rude and cryptic remarks, as the grandparent did.

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