{"id":1389,"date":"2014-05-07T14:27:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T18:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1389"},"modified":"2017-09-06T12:28:52","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T16:28:52","slug":"are-you-a-patriots-or-eagles-fan-dont-worry-your-first-born-will-know-which-die-hard-fan-you-are-before-potty-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2014\/05\/07\/are-you-a-patriots-or-eagles-fan-dont-worry-your-first-born-will-know-which-die-hard-fan-you-are-before-potty-training\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you a Patriots or Giants fan? Transitive Reasoning Skills will help your first-born decipher which die-hard fan you are before Potty Training!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

We all pick \u201cfavorites\u201d or have things that we prefer in our everyday lives. It may be chicken alfredo over marinara sauce at your favorite Italian restaurant, moose tracks ice cream over cookies and cream or the Patriots over the Giants. But – would you believe that an infant of only 16 months could understand and interpret YOUR preferences?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The way children of only 1.5 years old can pick up on preferences is through transitive reasoning, a process through which they recognize relationships among things in a consecutive and logical order.\u00a0 For example, if Brendan prefers the Giants over the Patriots, and prefers the Patriots over the Eagles, we can assume Brendan prefers the Giants over the Eagles as well (i.e., If A > B and B > C, then A > C). This is an interesting and powerful thing for parents with young children to learn, particularly if their future team allegiances are important!<\/p>\n

According to Jean Piaget, a well-known Swiss psychologist, children do not gain transitive reasoning skills until after infancy. This claim comes from his theory of cognitive development, which separates child development into four stages. Each stage is separated by big milestone achievements. For example, in the second stage, between the ages of two and six, a child begins to learn language. During the third stage, between the ages of seven and twelve,\u00a0which is called the \u201cconcrete operational period,\u201d a child starts to develop concepts and can perform mental operations, such as seriation, which involves tasks like a child putting their stuffed animals in order from biggest to smallest. Also he claims that it is not until the third stage that a child will develop transitive reasoning skills.\u00a0Piaget\u2019s theory provided a reference point for psychologists; however, his critics challenge whether he underestimated the true abilities of child development.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

As three such critics, Yi Mou, Jordan Province and Yuyan Lou set out to test infants\u2019 true transitive reasoning skills, hoping to prove that transitivity develops in infancy.\u00a0As infants sat on their parent\u2019s lap, an experimenter sat behind two different colored footballs, acting out her preferences clearly for the child. First, the experimenter sat behind a red football placed on the right and a yellow football placed on the left. The experimenter would noticeably choose the red football, demonstrating that she \u201cpreferred\u201d the red football over the yellow one. Then the infant would watch a second trial in which the experimenter sat behind a yellow football placed on the right and a green football placed on the left. This time the experimenter chose the yellow football as her favorite. Through these trials, if the infant \u201clearned\u201d what the experimenter preferred, they would expect that between the red and green ball, the experimenter would choose the red football.\u00a0Therefore, if the Eagles beat the Patriots, the infant should know that the experimenter wouldn’t be too happy.<\/p>\n

Then the infants were put to the test.\u00a0The experimenter returned and sat behind a green football on the right and a red football on the left. During the first presentation the experimenter would reach for the green football, which is an unexpected event, as in the previous trials the infant should have learned that the experimenter prefers the red one. The second time the experimenter would reach for the red football over the green, which is an expected event, in line with what the child had learned in the first round.<\/p>\n

To measure whether or not the infants in the study possessed transitive reasoning skills, experimenters measured an infant\u2019s looking time and where they directed their gaze. Babies will look longer at new, surprising things and will look for a short amount of time at things that cause boredom because nothing has changed. So if the experimenter chose the red football, the infant should look at the experimenter for a short amount of time because he or she would already expect that they would\u2019ve chose the red football. However, if the experimenter chooses the green football, a red flag (Pun intended) should pop up in the infant\u2019s head. The infant should look at the experimenter for a long period of time because the event is unexpected, causing an element of surprise as if the infant was thinking, “But wait a minute, I thought you didn’t like the eagles.”<\/p>\n

Data from this study did in fact show that the majority of infants looked longer at the unexpected event than the expected event!\u00a0But as the experimenters continued to play around with ordering, results became murky. Since the presentations shown to the infant were no longer in sequential order, it made it more difficult for the infant to process what football the experimenter preferred the most. In fact, the reverse order of trials led the majority of infants to look longer at the expected event than the unexpected event \u2013 NOT what Mou, Province, and Lou were hoping to find! Though the infants had a hard time figuring out which football the experimenter preferred, they didn\u2019t necessarily lack transitive reasoning skills, but instead these results highlighted the importance of learning preferences chronologically, in an easy-to-digest order.<\/p>\n

So, Yi Mou, Jordan Province and Yuyan Lou set out with another experiment, keeping a similar methodology as the one before, but making one addition: after infants saw what the experimenter preferred, he stepped out of the room and then the infants were presented with three colored footballs in various orders. \u00a0As seen in Figure 1, the footballs were displayed without the experimenter present to see if the order of the footballs on the table influenced the infant\u2019s reaction. If the color order of the footballs was green, yellow, red, it was considered a \u201cconsistent-direction\u201d condition because they were vertically set up from least favorite to most favorite football. The reverse color order of red, green, yellow was considered an \u201cinconsistent-direction\u201d condition because the order was not sequential and did not match the position of the preferred experimenter\u2019s red football in earlier trials. The experimenter would come back in and choose the red football over the green, or in alternative trials would choose the green over the red, demonstrating an unexpected event.<\/p>\n

\"Figure<\/a>

Figure 1<\/p><\/div>\n

The findings again supported the importance of chronological ordering, as the majority of infants during consistent-direction trials looked longer at the unexpected event than the expected one. The children in the inconsistent- direction trials had a more difficult time picking up on an \u201cunexpected event\u201d because the task was much too difficult, confusing infants as to which football the experimenter preferred. The children in the consistent-direction group had a much easier time reading the experimenter\u2019s preferences because the trials were set up in an organized manner, similar to the first experiment, which allowed the infant to make inferences faster.<\/p>\n

This study proves Piaget wrong and supports the fact that infants as young as 16 months possess transitive reasoning skills if probed the correct way, which in turn helps them understand people\u2019s preferences!\u00a0If an age-appropriate task, such as putting colored footballs in order from least favorite to most favorite, is presented to an infant, a basic level of transitive reasoning skills will be observed. It seems that successive ordering cues are what help trigger transitivity in infants, helping them engage in this developmental skill.<\/p>\n

In real life, the results of these studies can be used across households in America with young children, and especially for those who want to instill allegiances from a young age. My advice to those parents? Keep reaching for that lucky red Patriots football in your hand during big NFL games and leave a blue Giants and green Eagles football somewhere on the floor. Your baby will then be sure to know what die-hard fan they\u2019ll be when they grow up\u2026 even if verbal communication is still at a mere \u201cgoo goo gaga.\u201d There\u2019s plenty of time to teach them the team\u2019s fight song.<\/p>\n

References<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Mou, Y., Province, J., & Luo, Y. (2013). Can Infants Make Transitive Inferences?.\u00a0Cognitive Psychology<\/i>,\u00a068<\/i>, 98-112.<\/p>\n

Image 1 Source: Reuter, Traci. “Stop crying, the game hasn’t started yet.” JPG file.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all pick \u201cfavorites\u201d or have things that we prefer in our everyday lives. It may be chicken alfredo over marinara sauce at your favorite Italian restaurant, moose tracks ice cream over cookies and cream or the Patriots over the Giants. But – would you believe that an infant of only 16 months could understand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5476,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[313],"tags":[370832,150434],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1389"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3784,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389\/revisions\/3784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}