WEBVTT - The Nature of Fun, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.520 Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.600 your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:20.560 and we're back with part two of our series on fun. 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.160 Of course, we all roughly know what fun is. You 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:26.239 know fun when you see it, you know fun when 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:28.560 you're having it, so you got a gut level understanding. 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:32.199 But fun is actually rather difficult to define and to 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:37.880 differentiate from other related concepts like pleasure, happiness, and entertainment. 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:40.479 So we've been trying to to tease out some of 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.599 the studies about fun and some observations people can make 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:47.920 about fun and what its unique characteristics are. Now, in 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:50.920 the last episode we talked a bit uh Rob. You 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:54.880 had a section about what particular features make a game fun, 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:57.440 and I thought one of the most interesting things you 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:02.440 brought up there was the suggestion of a natural association 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:06.759 between learning and fun, which is in a way kind 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.560 of funny because you can think about very painful attempts 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:13.880 to to make wrote learning quote fun in some way, 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:17.840 you know, adding games in school that are of questionable 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:20.440 fund value sometimes but that could in a way still 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:23.800 be onto something because there may, in fact be um 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:26.679 a major role for fun in the kind of learning 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:28.840 that we do in a non structured way, in a 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:34.960 non school environment, when we're just learning through free exploratory behavior. Yeah. Yeah, 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:38.400 it is fascinating to think about because it made me 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:43.440 think back, certainly on school days and at various age 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:45.759 points and thinking like, well, when did this? When did 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:48.440 it become fun to engage in this quest for learning? 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:50.800 And you know, those are the learning experiences that that 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.000 do tend to stand out the most. Yeah, I have 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.640 similar experiences. A lot of what I remember most from 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:01.040 school are the things that were the most fun in school. Uh. 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:03.520 And So I wanted to talk about a paper that 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:06.559 I came across that I found pretty interesting. I think, again, 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.640 this only addresses one facet of the issue of funds 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:11.280 is it's not going to give you a total view. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.240 But it was a really interesting child psychology paper from 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:20.800 two thousand seven addressing the relationship between toys, fun, and 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:25.919 a child's ability to control natural experiments. So this paper 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:28.959 was by a couple of authors named Laura E. Schultz 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.760 and Elizabeth Barreff Bonna Wits. Now for some context, I 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:36.000 was checking out, particularly some of the other research by 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.480 Laura Schultz. She actually has a a pretty good TED 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.600 talk where she explains sort of the arc of her career. 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:45.160 It's from a few years back, but Schultz is a 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:48.480 professor of cognitive sciences at m I T and a 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.160 lot of her research is focused on the question how 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:56.280 do children learn so well? Because children are able to 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.600 learn how the world works in a relatively short time, 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:03.920 with relatively limited experiences. I mean, people often phrase this 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:08.639 question about language in particular, I think because language acquisition 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:11.560 is just one of the most amazing things. Yeah, it's 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:15.120 it's astounding, Like the way children acquire language, Like how 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:20.120 do you learn to put together infinitely variable, grammatically functional 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:24.440 sentences just by listening to adults talk for a few years, 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.480 Like you don't even have to be taught the rules 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:30.520 of grammar, you know, when you learn grammar in school. 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:34.160 The grammar you're learning there is basically just an analytical 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:37.640 tool or maybe an attempt to kind of regularize or 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:42.960 normalize exactly the way you construct sentences. But you're you're 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:45.320 already able to do so in a functional way, I mean, 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:48.200 where people can understand you. Yeah, the neural plasticity of 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:51.640 children is just absolutely amazing. I know we've we've touched 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:53.720 on it a few times over the over the years, 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:57.000 and yeah, it's it's fascinating to learn about. It's it's 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:01.440 mind blowing to experience in real life and real time 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:03.080 that you sort of lose some of the mystery at 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.800 times by being so close to it. But but yeah, 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:10.160 like that they have to acquire so much data in 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:12.600 such a short period of time. And I think another 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:15.160 weird thing thinking about this and thinking about it too 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.200 for this episode in terms of fun and also you know, 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.040 talking about games and toys and the imagination, as we'll 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:23.719 get into, is that we we live in a time 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:26.560 now where I feel like we we definitely have more 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.600 understanding of what children are and when, what they're not, 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:32.960 and what they're doing, and that all these things have 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:35.640 a purpose. But it's so easy to sort of fall 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:39.560 back in this older way of thinking and look at 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:42.000 a child playing, a child having fun, and then well, 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:43.360 of course they having fun. They don't have anything else 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:46.480 to do, they don't have a job. Uh, look at 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:50.680 these look at these bumps. But this is frivolous activity, right, 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:53.680 It's it's for some reason, it's still easy to think 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:56.160 think that way, But of course we know better now, 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:58.839 we know that the reality of it is that part 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:02.839 of what makes ldren children is that they are these sponges. 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:07.600 They are absorbing all of this information and then processing it, uh, 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:10.000 coming to terms with it. And so a lot of 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:13.839 the the ideas that they were discussing in this episode, uh, 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:15.840 you know, some of the ones that I'm going to 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:18.080 get into are certainly not the only theories out there, 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:21.840 but a lot of them do involve this this more 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:24.640 nuanced vision of the child and what the child is 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:27.800 doing in the world. Yeah, play is a child's job. 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:30.359 It is them that they're going to school, but in 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:34.600 an unstructured way. Play is how they not just you know. Uh. 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:37.000 You mentioned it's important for them to gather a lot 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:39.560 of data, and that is true. But another way of 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:43.920 thinking about it, children are able to generalize inferences about 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:48.160 how things work, uh, with way less data than you 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:50.800 would expect to say, a computer to need a certain 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:53.240 kind of program to need in order to learn how 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:58.599 something works. So how do children make such powerful general inferences? 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:01.320 How do they figure out rules about how the world 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:05.360 works on the basis of so little experience? I think 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:08.040 play is a big part of this um and so 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:09.839 the paper I wanted to look at again. This is 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:13.000 by Laura E. Schultz and Elizabeth Barreff Bonowitz. It's called 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:17.960 serious fun. Preschoolers engage in more exploratory play when evidence 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.880 is confounded. This was published in the journal Developmental Psychology 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:25.160 in the year two thousand seven. And this study looks 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:28.760 at a concept that it calls causal knowledge, meaning an 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:33.359 understanding of cause and effect relationships in the environment. Another 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:37.600 way of thinking about it is just understanding how things work. Now, 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:42.040 obviously a major part of child development is this formation 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:45.680 of general causal knowledge. Learning that if you set a 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:48.640 spherical object down on a table and you let go 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.320 of it, it can roll off the edge, or learning 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:53.479 that if you turn a door knob it will open 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.000 a door, or learning that if you pet the cat 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:59.479 too roughly, the cat might hiss and scratch you. The 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:02.320 world is full of these cause and effect relationships, and 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:04.680 to learn how the world works, you have to not 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:08.200 only learn, but you have to learn how to learn. 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.640 You have to, to some extent, understand when a relationship 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:16.600 between two events that you observe is causal and when 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:19.880 that relationship is just random or safe to ignore. So 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.200 you have to learn how to tell the difference between Okay, 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:25.560 I pet the cat too rough and it gets angry. 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:28.640 That's clearly causal, Like that not being gentle with the 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:32.400 cat is what made it angry versus, oh, I'm plucking 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:34.560 at the carpet and then a bird lands on the 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.920 window sill. Somehow a child usually figures out that that 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:42.240 is not actually causal, that's just random. So how does 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:46.120 a young child master all of this complex inference? Uh? 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:48.480 I think I was just thinking about this, and I 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:52.120 think some inference might be helped along by maybe instinctive 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:57.480 heuristics like physical proximity, like how close is what I 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:00.280 did to the effect that it might have produce boost? 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:04.760 Are they physically connected in some way that I can see? Obviously, 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:07.480 this wouldn't always be the case, especially in a world 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:10.680 full of you know, remote electronics and stuff like that, 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:14.320 but that would help a little bit. Another way of 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:17.280 sifting through inferences to separate the good from the bad 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:21.560 is just by repeating experiments. Whatever you just did, do 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:25.480 it again and see if the same result happens. Of course, 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:28.640 this is useful in in actual scientific experiments. You know, 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:30.600 you want to repeat experiments to see if you get 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:34.600 the same result. But you can observe children naturally doing 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.240 this all the time. They'll do something and look for 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.400 a result, and then they'll do it again, and they'll 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:45.160 do it again. Of course, in general, children just love repetition. Yeah. Well, 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:47.920 and you might you might plausibly argue that there's a 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:52.080 kind of built in science module in in the child's brain. 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:53.880 I mean, it's not going to be as refined as 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:58.360 a as a carefully scrutinized scientific method planned by adults, 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.160 But you could say that there's some kind of instinct 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:04.079 for repetition that might be based on the fact that 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:09.040 repeating experiments gets you better data. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:12.280 that's what's going on when when generally, if there's something funny, 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:14.719 I've noticed that with with kids, like they figured out 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.360 a joke that works, whether they're going to keep telling 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:20.400 that joke, keep telling that joke, and then I guess 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:22.959 part of the learning experiment is realizing like how far 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:24.800 how many times can you tell about joke and it's 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.880 still elicits a response, Uh, what are the hard limits 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.920 to it? So the authors of this developmental psychology paper 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:36.120 are talking about children's acquisition of causal knowledge, and they 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:40.280 write that since basically since Jean Pig, psychologists have mostly 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:44.560 accepted that children construct their causal model of the world 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:49.400 through exploratory play, like this is not something having. Having 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.040 causal knowledge is not usually something that has to be 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:55.319 explicitly taught by adults, though and of course in some 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:58.280 limited cases it can be. And it's not something that 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.880 just comes was fully built in hardwired instinct. It's something 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:05.800 that children learn through experimenting with the world on their own. 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:09.360 So under this model, a major function of play is learning, 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:14.640 specifically learning to predict cause and effect relationships in the world. Now, 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:17.400 if this model is true, you would expect to see 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:20.720 evidence of that if you just observe the natural patterns 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:24.640 of exploratory play behavior in children. And the authors isolate 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:26.880 one major finding which does seem to back up this 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:30.440 model of the acquisition of causal knowledge, and that is 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:34.959 children's preference for novel stimuli. So the authors don't phrase 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:37.160 it this way, but just my interpretation, I think it 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:40.240 would connect to the idea of like, why do children 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:43.480 want a new toy when they already have toys at home? 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:46.600 I think you could argue that, at least in part 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.280 This could be because they already know how the old 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:54.000 toy works. They've used it in a hundred different ways. 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:56.439 They've figured out all the different things that it can 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:58.880 do and what it does when you do different things 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:02.440 to it, And a new toy provides opportunities to learn 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:06.760 new things about something else, something different. Yeah, this of 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:13.319 course is frequently a parental comment about the ephemeral interest 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:16.400 in toys. Right, you get the fancy new toy, it's 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:18.280 played with for a day and then it's on the floor, 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:21.720 and then we quite hypocritically, will say well, why aren't 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:23.920 you still playing with that toy? And if if the 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:27.280 child was savvy, they might say, well, you have top 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:29.800 Gun on VHS. Why aren't you still watching that? Why 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:32.360 did you stop watching that movie? Why isn't that you 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:34.160 just go to movie? You like to watch movies, you 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.720 own one, watch it? Um, you know, we're we're not 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:40.079 that that different in that regard. Another big one, of course, 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:43.400 is there's the there's the old toy versus new toy. 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:46.959 But it's something that's always more interesting other kids toys. 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:50.400 Whenever you take the child out, then you're you're I 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:52.599 don't know, you're a friend's house. Or or at a 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:55.120 park and somebody's brought a toy like the toy of 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.959 the other child is instantly interesting for this very reason 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:01.520 because it is the new toy. It is the novel toy. Well, 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:03.959 that seems like it might have a double appeal because 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:06.120 not only is it novel, so it has the appeal 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:09.120 that all new things do, but it also has been 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:11.920 sort of pre vetted, like if some other kid is 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:15.040 playing with it, that shows like, okay, there probably is 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:17.439 something good about this toy and it would be worth 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:19.679 my time, right and yeah, and then also there's the 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:23.880 social dynamics of this thing is also desired, and ownership 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:27.720 maybe up in the air on it. But this is 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:31.959 all fascinating thinking about about something about the novel factor here, 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:35.600 because once again makes us think of fun and uh 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:39.560 and the idea of learning from the last episode. So 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:42.400 even if you're just thinking about an object right like 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:46.000 it's there's something even if it's just a tactile experience, 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:49.960 you're interested in in what does it feel like, what 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:53.880 happens when I throw it against a wall, etcetera. And 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:55.840 of course all of this reminds me once more about 0:12:55.840 --> 0:13:00.520 the connection that we're looking at between fun and learning, right, 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:03.600 because this paper is looking at a connection between learning 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:07.160 and exploratory play behavior. This is beyond the scope of 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:09.480 the paper itself, but I think it is a totally 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:14.560 reasonable inference to believe that the primary intrinsic motivating factor 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:19.120 driving exploratory play is fun. So like fun is the 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:24.400 is the wages that are paid for the work of play? Yeah, 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:28.040 I thinking of a biblical parallelism, is the wages the 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:30.840 wages of play is fun. It's gonna be the singular, 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:40.640 is right. Yeah. But anyway, so coming back to the 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:42.640 author's introduction on this paper, they say, you know, at 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:45.040 the time this paper was written, there was actually not 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:48.920 a whole lot of evidence for consistent patterns that have 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:53.240 been observed in the exploratory behavior of children. Uh, And 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:57.040 so they're they're going to uh study one pattern in 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:01.000 this experiment they're setting up. But as as preface to that, 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:05.400 they write, quote moreover, considerable research suggests that even older 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:11.040 children and naive adults are poor designing causally informative experiments 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:15.160 and have difficulty anticipating the type of evidence that would 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:18.680 support or undermine causal hypotheses. And then they cite a 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:21.760 whole bunch of studies to back up this assertion. Um. 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:25.080 They write, quote, such findings pose a challenge for the 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:29.040 constructivist account. The number of events children might explore in 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:32.040 principle is vastly greater than the number of events they 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:37.440 can explore in practice. If children's exploratory play is largely unsystematic, 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:40.560 how might they generate the type of evidence that could 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:44.640 support efficient causal learning. So this is a really interesting paradox. 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:49.560 It seems very likely that children learn causal knowledge by 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:54.600 exploratory play, and yet children don't seem by and large 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:59.040 to be very good at designing causally informative experiments like 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:03.480 that they they have double separating out variables and stuff 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:08.800 like that. Nevertheless, children might have some instincts about how 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:12.400 to sift some different types of evidence. Uh and the 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:15.760 authors hypothesized that exploratory playing children might not only be 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:19.400 drawn toward novelty such as here's a new toy or 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:23.080 two perceptual complexity, but also to what they call the 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:26.680 quality of evidence. They observe that there might be a 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:30.280 relationship between a child's desire to play with something and 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:33.240 what type of evidence they are getting from it or 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:36.800 have already gotten from it. Maybe even young children who 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.880 are not so great at designing experiments can in in 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:45.520 some senses, tell the difference between informative evidence and uninformative evidence. 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.680 They can make predictions based on those differences, and they're 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:53.720 driven to continue playing based on those differences. So what 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:56.080 would be the experiment to test this? Well, they tried 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.640 this out on a group of sixty four preschoolers between 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:02.080 forty eight and seventy months of age. This was an 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:06.240 experiment staged at a at a children's museum, and the 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:09.760 experiment goes like this. You've got a special toy built 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:12.880 for the experiment, and the toy takes the form of 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.640 a box with a slot at the top and two 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:19.560 levers on the sides. In reality, each lever when you 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:22.640 press it causes one of two different figures to pop 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:25.320 up out of the slot at the top of the box. 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:28.480 There's a puppet figure operated by one lever and a 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:31.360 little duck operated by a different lever. Now, there were 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:36.400 several experimental conditions. One was what they called the confounded 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:40.680 evidence condition UH, and the others were all three different 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:44.760 types of unconfounded evidence conditions. The difference being that in 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:48.920 the unconfounded conditions, the child would one way or another 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:53.360 get to witness or experience unambiguous evidence of how the 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:56.560 box worked, so they would see the levers being operated 0:16:56.680 --> 0:17:00.360 separately and they would figure out which lever may which 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:04.520 little figure pop up. But in the confounded condition there 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:09.120 would be unresolved ambiguity after their initial experience with the box, 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:13.480 so the difference was that like in the unconfounded conditions, UH, 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:16.840 there would be a procedure where the child and an 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:20.280 adult experiment or would count to three and then each 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:22.720 press a lever at the same time, and then after 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:25.920 that they would take turns counting to three and pressing 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:29.879 or operating one or the other lever independently for a 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:32.119 total of three presses, but in the end the child 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:35.720 would get to see how what each one did. In 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:39.480 the confounded condition, the child and the experiment or would 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:43.000 always each press their lever at the same time on 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:46.040 the count of three, so it would never be clear 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:49.760 to the child which lever did what. Either lever could 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.159 operate each of the figures, or one lever could operate 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:55.679 both of them, or maybe both levers had to be 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:57.879 pressed at the same time to make them pop up. 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:00.240 There would be no way to know bay st on 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.639 pressing them at the same time as the experiment er anyway, 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.159 So you have these different conditions, and then at the 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.239 end of each one, the experimenter would walk away and 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:11.040 tell the child it was okay for them to play 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:13.199 with whatever they wanted. And so then they had the 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:16.679 option to keep playing with the box from the procedure 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.000 or reach for a novel box that was also within 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:22.800 arms reach that hadn't been part of the experiment yet. 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:27.479 So what did they find. Well, the previous findings from 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:31.320 other studies about children's preferences for novelty came through. The 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:35.040 kids very often reached for and spent more time playing 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:37.439 with the new toy instead of the toy they had 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:41.680 already played with. But whether or not there was lingering 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.960 causal ambiguity about the original box made a big difference. 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:49.199 In the unconfounded conditions, where it was clear how the 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:53.159 box worked, they spent more time playing with the novel toy, 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:56.200 but in the confounded condition, where the original toy remained 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:59.600 a mystery, they spent more time playing with the original 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:03.600 box that they had already played with, And this suggests 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:07.240 that a lack of good evidence about how an object 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:12.520 works is a strong motivating factor driving children towards spending 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:17.200 time in exploratory play with that object, and in some way, 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:21.160 most children can tell when the evidence that they're aware 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:24.240 of is sufficient to understand the workings of the box 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:28.440 or not. Now, there was one funny little note in 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:31.040 their results section where they write that in the confounded 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:33.480 condition where the child hadn't been able to see the 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:37.440 levers operated independently, so didn't know how it worked. Um, 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:39.800 they write quote, in the course of their free play 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:46.399 with the familiar box, children often manipulated the levers simultaneously critically. However, 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:51.359 twelve of the sixteen children or seven also manipulated each 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:55.560 lever separately, fully disambiguating the evidence. So I thought that 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:59.320 was funny that they would they would be curious about Okay, 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:01.679 there would I'm part of them would know I haven't 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.239 yet figured out how this box works. And yet what 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:07.240 they would do when they got hold of it often 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:10.840 was initially repeat the same thing that they had already 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:13.440 seen happen, which is pressing both lovers at the same time, 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:16.320 which doesn't tell you anything more than they already learned. 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:19.159 So like like they know that something's wrong, but they 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:25.320 don't always immediately figure out how to disambiguate the confounded evidence. Yeah, 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:27.680 this is fascinating and made me made me think of 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:30.960 like just of course, just sort of basic toy interactions 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:33.800 like it made me think for some reason of the panic, Pete. 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:36.600 Did you do you remember the panic Pete? I'm not sure, 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:40.200 not yet. Describe it to me. A little pink, sort 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:45.080 of limbless clown from outer space, and if you squeeze him, 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:48.760 then the red balls that are in his nose and 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.080 at your holes pop out, and also the blue eyes 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:54.720 of his the blue balls of his eye sockets. Yes, 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:57.840 I understand, Panic Pete. Now I seem to recall a 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:01.040 scene in Jurassic Park where Wayne Knight squeezing one of these, 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:04.639 chatting with Mr Hammond. Right, Oh, you may be right. 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:07.040 I forgot about that, but yeah, but you know, it's 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:08.800 one of these things where if you if you bust 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:10.639 out this toy in front of a child and you 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:13.080 squeeze it, you know what the child is going to 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:15.040 want to do. The child needs to squeeze that toy 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:18.919 as well to witness this, to to to to to 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:22.480 have the feeling of of being the the individual in 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:26.520 power over the pete doll uh and then it's and 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:29.480 then of course this would not be a treasured toy 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:33.040 for all eternity. They would squeeze it, however, many many times, 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:35.800 and then you abandon it because it's it's been used. 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:39.639 Panic pete has fulfilled all your curiosity. And even as 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:42.760 a an adult, like that would basically be your experience 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:45.760 with a panic pete. Um someone gave you one, you 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:48.480 would be like, Okay, I'll squeeze this a few times. Interesting, 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:51.480 I have now consumed all of the necessary data, and 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:54.160 I may set the panic pete aside, well, even thinking 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:57.119 about like seeing somebody else squeeze the panic pete and 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:00.760 then um, wanting to squeeze it yourself. I mean, I 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:04.200 do think there is there are some interesting mysteries that 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:06.919 like could fill the child's mind before they get a 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:09.960 chance to try it out, which is like, Okay, would 0:22:10.080 --> 0:22:13.400 just squeezing it normally make it make the eyes pop 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:15.080 out and the ears pop out and everything? Or do 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:17.159 I need to squeeze it a special way? Is it 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:19.720 possible I could squeeze it and it wouldn't work? And 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:22.280 then what would I need to figure out how to do? Yeah? 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:25.280 Could I what if I have pushed the eyeballs in 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:27.679 while squeezing the body, what would that do? You know? 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:30.040 They're all these these sort of different ways. It's almost 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:33.639 like a you know, sort of a play testing on it, 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:35.119 you know, like like what what are the what are 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:37.000 the limits of the design? How can I sort of 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:40.320 break the design? Like children want to do that naturally? 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:42.439 And I mean that's one of the ways that toys 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:47.760