Scientific Inquiry Among the Preschool Set 10.01.2012 | New York
Times | Sundya N. Bhanoo When engaged in what looks like child’s
play, preschoolers are actually behaving like scientists,
according to a new report in the journal Science: forming
hypotheses, running experiments, calculating probabilities and
deciphering causal relationships about the world. The report’s
author, Alison Gopnik, a psychologist at the University of
California, Berkeley, says she based it on more than 10 years’
worth of research and studies, including some of her own. In one
study, for example, an experimenter performed five different
sequences of three actions each, as a 4-year-old looked on. The
sequences would either activate a toy or fail to activate it.
When the children were given the toy, they often performed only
the actions required to activate it. They were able to eliminate
the unnecessary actions by observation. Other studies have found
that when children are simply taught, they don’t explore and
test multiple hypothese