Saturday, June 18, 2011

The harmful effects of uttering "think" and "know" (at least when you're under 4)?

Some people argue that it's harmful for children to use the standard algorithms of arithmetic before they understand how and why they work. Supposedly "premature" use blocks future understanding.

By extension young children are harming themselves all the time--specifically when they use words like "think" and "know." That's because, as it turns out, children younger than 4 don't understand the meanings of these words--and, in particular, what distinguishes "think" from "know"--even though they use these words frequently.

I'm reminded of this phenomenon every time I teach my Autism, Language and Reasoning class and revisit the following passage from Katherine Nelson's "Language Pathways into the Community of Minds" (from Why Language Matters for Theory of Mind):
At 3 years, most children studied produce the focal cognitive terms think and know in the course of everyday conversations, at least occasionally...It is not until about 4 years that children appear to use these terms to indicate specific mental states, distinguishing between the meanings of think and know on the basis of certainty...It is not until the early school years that tests of comprehension show clear discrimination among the terms think, know , and guess. And even in the late elementary years, children do not demonstrate understanding of the full range of distinctive meanings of know.
As Nelson explains, the earliest uses of these terms can be described as "without meaning." Does such meaningless use interfere with later understanding? Quite the contrary:
The acquisition of meaning of abstract terms such as mental-state words is best conceptualized in terms of acquiring meaning from use.
Perhaps language isn't the only place where meaningless use is productive rather than harmful; where, in Nelson's words, one can acquire meaning from use. And perhaps if we substitute "acquire" with "construct," even a hard-core Constructivist might consider this possibility.  

Or, at least, isn't it pretty to think so?


Barry Garelick said...


Anonymous said...


Amy P said...
