Learning by Children and Adults

[Amelia]

I believe the ability to learn by principle has a lot to do with capacity of abstraction. Abstract thinking means you can think of the concept "circle" without having to think of one specific red circle that's drawn on the paper on your desk. It's something small children's brains typically don't do very well. First they have to learn to identify circle-shaped things around them, only later do they acquire the ability to think of circles in general. So in Kirby's example, the kid will learn a new general principle by acquiring the idea of circle, but only after seeing lots and lots of circle and non-circle shapes. That's learning by example. If you try to tell them of circles in general before they have arrived to this point of their development, you will only confuse them. They will have no idea what you're talking about.

When someone is able to learn by general principle, you can define the principle to them and they will understand it without the support of lots of examples. They will mostly infer the examples from the principle. You tell them of a circle, and they can use that idea and start drawing circles athough they never saw one before. That's why I think it's related to abstract thinking.

[daal]

Some evidence for children learning by principle can be seen when they apply principles incorrectly, for example when they use regular forms for irregular verbs or irregular plurals that they don't know, such as: "I drawed you a picture" or "Tomorrow is the twenty tooth." Some kids will develop their own principles and extrapolate from them for example by calling all fuzzy things cats or assuming all men with white beards are Santa Claus.

[jts]

Some evidence for children learning by principle can be seen when they apply principles incorrectly, for example when they use regular forms for irregular verbs or irregular plurals that they don't know, such as: "I drawed you a picture" or "Tomorrow is the twenty tooth." Some kids will develop their own principles and extrapolate from them for example by calling all fuzzy things cats or assuming all men with white beards are Santa Claus.

Exactly so - and I'm personally more surprised by other grammatical rules that children can follow so perfectly that most of us don't even realize they are rules until we a linguist ambushes us with some example sentences. We notice children over-generalizing with respect to the rules on plurals and past-tense because there are multiple conflicting rules and we have to guide children through adjudication, both in the family and in school.

Note the role of abstraction here. "Verb" is abstract, and "past tense" is abstract. "Number" is abstract, and "ordinal" is abstract. However, you only need the abstract concepts to describe the rule. Children can follow the rule long before they can describe it.

[Boidhre]

Some evidence for children learning by principle can be seen when they apply principles incorrectly, for example when they use regular forms for irregular verbs or irregular plurals that they don't know, such as: "I drawed you a picture" or "Tomorrow is the twenty tooth." Some kids will develop their own principles and extrapolate from them for example by calling all fuzzy things cats or assuming all men with white beards are Santa Claus.

Exactly so - and I'm personally more surprised by other grammatical rules that children can follow so perfectly that most of us don't even realize they are rules until we a linguist ambushes us with some example sentences. We notice children over-generalizing with respect to the rules on plurals and past-tense because there are multiple conflicting rules and we have to guide children through adjudication, both in the family and in school.

Note the role of abstraction here. "Verb" is abstract, and "past tense" is abstract. "Number" is abstract, and "ordinal" is abstract. However, you only need the abstract concepts to describe the rule. Children can follow the rule long before they can describe it.

In bilingual kids it can be amusing. There's a verb in Irish déan, its meaning includes make and do but also encompasses some senses of perform, execute, manufacture, commit (in the sense of a crime) and so on. So it's a verb you use a lot, it gets even worse when combined into phrases e.g. ag déanamh uisce (doing water or making water literally) which means bilging. So translating it straight across to do/make/commit/whatever in English is risky.

So my three year old at the moment: "Will I do that for you Siún?" "Yeah you can make it Dada." "There you go, I did it for you." "Yeah you made it for me Dada."

She's not gotten old enough yet to not make this error. She hears do, translates it in her head as déan, and answers back with the most common English word she associates with déan which is make. My six year old son on the other hand never makes mistakes of this kind, the kind of thing he does is if he doesn't know a word in one language but he does in the other language he'll take the word from language B treat it as a word from language A and apply the associated grammatical rules to it and put it in a sentence in language A. So he could take an Irish word like marú (to kill), put it in the English past tense by forming marúed and put it in a sentence like "He was marúed." They don't tend to confuse the grammatical rules of the language, I've never seen him speaking in English and using Irish grammar, it's only with borrowed words that it gets a bit confused.

[Bill Spight]

Some evidence for children learning by principle can be seen when they apply principles incorrectly, for example when they use regular forms for irregular verbs or irregular plurals that they don't know, such as: "I drawed you a picture" or "Tomorrow is the twenty tooth." Some kids will develop their own principles and extrapolate from them for example by calling all fuzzy things cats or assuming all men with white beards are Santa Claus.

Children go through three stages in learning the past tense of English irregular verbs. First, they learn the irregular forms. Then they apply the general rule, as in drawed, goed, eated. Then they go back to the irregular forms.

I'm not sure if I would call a general rule a principle, and I certainly would not call generalization the application of principles. For principles I would like abstraction, which most kids do not develop before age 8 or so.

A possibly embarrassing example of generalization is calling every man with glasses and a beard Daddy. Don't laugh. I've had two children that I just met call me daddy. One of the mothers told me, "She calls every man with glasses and a beard Daddy."

[skydyr]

Some evidence for children learning by principle can be seen when they apply principles incorrectly, for example when they use regular forms for irregular verbs or irregular plurals that they don't know, such as: "I drawed you a picture" or "Tomorrow is the twenty tooth." Some kids will develop their own principles and extrapolate from them for example by calling all fuzzy things cats or assuming all men with white beards are Santa Claus.

Children go through three stages in learning the past tense of English irregular verbs. First, they learn the irregular forms. Then they apply the general rule, as in drawed, goed, eated. Then they go back to the irregular forms.

I'm not sure if I would call a general rule a principle, and I certainly would not call generalization the application of principles. For principles I would like abstraction, which most kids do not develop before age 8 or so.

A possibly embarrassing example of generalization is calling every man with glasses and a beard Daddy. Don't laugh. I've had two children that I just met call me daddy. One of the mothers told me, "She calls every man with glasses and a beard Daddy."

This learning process seems quite applicable to learning go as well. I think that adult learners are much more likely to jump in at step 2 (apply a proverb everywhere) and stick there without looking at other options as much, because they were pointed to these principles too early, as opposed to developing them through repetition. This can bootstrap you into some semblance of decency more quickly, but perhaps makes it harder to step beyond the interface of proverbs to see the game as it is.

[Bill Spight]

In bilingual kids it can be amusing. There's a verb in Irish déan, its meaning includes make and do but also encompasses some senses of perform, execute, manufacture, commit (in the sense of a crime) and so on. So it's a verb you use a lot, it gets even worse when combined into phrases e.g. ag déanamh uisce (doing water or making water literally) which means bilging. So translating it straight across to do/make/commit/whatever in English is risky.

So my three year old at the moment: "Will I do that for you Siún?" "Yeah you can make it Dada." "There you go, I did it for you." "Yeah you made it for me Dada."

She's not gotten old enough yet to not make this error. She hears do, translates it in her head as déan, and answers back with the most common English word she associates with déan which is make. My six year old son on the other hand never makes mistakes of this kind, the kind of thing he does is if he doesn't know a word in one language but he does in the other language he'll take the word from language B treat it as a word from language A and apply the associated grammatical rules to it and put it in a sentence in language A. So he could take an Irish word like marú (to kill), put it in the English past tense by forming marúed and put it in a sentence like "He was marúed." They don't tend to confuse the grammatical rules of the language, I've never seen him speaking in English and using Irish grammar, it's only with borrowed words that it gets a bit confused.

IMX, an example from a Japanese-English bilingual kid was, "Nani wo doing?" for "What are you doing?" All of the adults, including yours truly, adopted it. "Nani wo doing?", "Nani wo toking about?" (Dropping the "l" in "talking"), etc.

Edit: For those unfamiliar with Japanese, nani is what, and wo indicates that it is the direct object. The are you is understood.

[HermanHiddema]

hyperpape, my ability to learn from principles was about as great as a 4 years old child as it was later and is today. (I do not recall well the degree of my ability to learn from examples at the age of 4.)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 073735.htm

[Bill Spight]

This learning process seems quite applicable to learning go as well. I think that adult learners are much more likely to jump in at step 2 (apply a proverb everywhere) and stick there without looking at other options as much, because they were pointed to these principles too early, as opposed to developing them through repetition. This can bootstrap you into some semblance of decency more quickly, but perhaps makes it harder to step beyond the interface of proverbs to see the game as it is.

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us,
To see the board as Gu Li sees it.
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion

[RobertJasiek]

Herman, that article refers to "normal" men. It is right that memory about childhood can be difficult; therefore, I refer only to things I can remember.

A very few prodigies are reported to speak a few foreign languages fluently at the age of 2... I wonder how, because my self-reflecting consciousness (and basic arithmetics with natural numbers to 100) started at 4. I can still recall the age and exact place, because the first moment of self-reflecting consciousness was associated with great astonishment. Other achievements of understanding long time ago I can recall well because of related great importance or joy.

Does the article take into account such factors?

[HermanHiddema]

Herman, that article refers to "normal" men. It is right that memory about childhood can be difficult; therefore, I refer only to things I can remember.

A very few prodigies are reported to speak a few foreign languages fluently at the age of 2... I wonder how, because my self-reflecting consciousness (and basic arithmetics with natural numbers to 100) started at 4. I can still recall the age and exact place, because the first moment of self-reflecting consciousness was associated with great astonishment. Other achievements of understanding long time ago I can recall well because of related great importance or joy.

Does the article take into account such factors?

The article does not so much say that memory of young age is difficult, but that it is unreliable. The subjects in the research all claim to have certain memories, but it turns out that many of those memories are inaccurate. It also mentions that emotional significance of the memory did not increase its accuracy. The unreliability of memory is also a phenomenon in the short term, by the way. Eye-witness testimony in court is notoriously unreliable, for example.

So without independent outside corroboration, there is every reason to assume that your memories are just as likely to be inaccurate as those of the test group in this experiment.

If you or others want to make claims regarding learning ability in children vs adults, I would prefer references to scientific studies, rather than personal anecdotal evidence with dubious accuracy.

[hyperpape]

Indeed, language learning is precisely not a case of learning by general principles. The child sees examples and distills principles, some of which are correct, and some of which are incorrect. And it is virtually impossible to correct children's linguistic behavior via language.

As for set theory, I'll get back to it later.

[jts]

Indeed, language learning is precisely not a case of learning by general principles. The child sees examples and distills principles, some of which are correct, and some of which are incorrect. And it is virtually impossible to correct children's linguistic behavior via language.

As for set theory, I'll get back to it later.

Perhaps we should avoid brewing metaphors. The child sees examples and... reproduces patterns?

[RobertJasiek]

Herman, empirical scientific articles are good for making statements about averages or distributions. Personal anecdotes (those that are reliable because and if the person's memory about a particular anecdote is very clear) are good as counter-examples for too general statements of the kind "all children...".

[HermanHiddema]

Herman, empirical scientific articles are good for making statements about averages or distributions. Personal anecdotes (those that are reliable because and if the person's memory about a particular anecdote is very clear) are good as counter-examples for too general statements of the kind "all children...".

No matter how "clear" you consider your memory, research shows that it is unreliable. Your memory could be correct. It could be false. We don't know. Since we cannot know if it is correct, it proves nothing and has no value as a counter-example.