Gelman+&+Bloom+(WK5)

//Questions within text// // Responses within text //

//**Young Children are Sensitive to How an Object was Created When Deciding What to Name it**//, Gelman & Bloom (week 5)

__**Summary**__

"The original study to pit appearance and function against one another found an unexplained developmental trend; young children tend to rely on appearance, older children rely on function, and adults go back to relying on appearance. While some studies support the view that the naming of artifacts for adults is essentially appearance-based, others that intended function is criterial. Similarly, while some studies that 3- and 4-year-olds will extend novel artifact names to other entities of the same shape, ignoring function, others that children will extend new artifact names to other entities of the same function, ignoring shape" (p. 91-92). "Hence it can be difficult to disentangle the two factors, completely and measure which feature people judge as more central" (pg 92).

"Firstly, they are 'naive essentialists', in that they seek to understand the superficial properties of objects in terms of deeper, more essential aspects of their nature. Secondly, they are highly interested in goals and desires of other people. Together these two aspects of children's thought might explain why they see the intent of an artifact's creator as an important consideration when deciding how an object should be named" (p. 100).

__**Quotes and Responses**__

Differences in Human-made artifacts vs. accidental artifacts (p. 91)
 * 1. Introduction**

‍‍‍‍‍"Young children tend to rely on appearance, older children rely on function, and adults go back to relying on appearance" (p. 91-92). ‍‍‍‍‍

"appearance (and in particular, shape) and function are usually highly correlated for basic-level categories (e.g. Rosch, 1978)" (p.92)

"Three- and 4-year-olds seem to share such intuitions. In one study, children were first asked to draw a balloon and a lollipop, and several minutes later were asked to describe each picture. Although the resulting drawings were indistinguishable by shape, children consistently labeled them in accord with their original intentions, as `balloon' and `lollipop', respectively" (p. 92).

"Difficult to disentangle [appearance and function] completely and measure in which feature people judge as more central" (p. 92).

"Arguably, we judge something to be a chair if we believe that it was constructed with the intent to //be// a chair" (p. 92). - We believe something to be based on the intent it was built for.

The "ballon and lollipop" drawing exercise is a nice example of labeling according to original intentions, not by shape. (p. 92)

"Gelman and Ebeling (1998) explored the naming of representational artwork, using a design in which subjects were asked to name a series of simple depictions, some which were described as purposefully created, others as created by accident. Even 2-year-olds were sensitive to this manipulation; for instance, they were more likely to call a bear-shaped blob of paint `a bear' if they believed that it was purposefully created than if they thought it was the result of an accident. Such findings suggest that children are sensitive to creator's intent when naming visual representations" (p. 92-93). "We predicted that, for both types of artifacts, children and adults would be more likely to provide artifact names (e.g. `it's a knife') for objects they believe to be intentionally created, and more likely to produce other types of descriptions (e.g. `it's plastic') for objects they believe were created by accident." (p 93) Sixty-six total participated, 30children, aged 2;9-3;11 (years;months), mean age 3;6, refered to as '3 year olds'. 19 children in the older group (aged 4;2-6;0, mean age 5;3, refered to as '5 year olds'. 17 undergraduates recuited from introductory psychology class. Roughly equal number of participants were randomly assigned to each of the two conditions; Intentional and Accidential.
 * 2. Method**
 * 2.1. Participants**

Included eight control objects and nine expermential objects. Four of the expermential objects "artifacts" were designed to be potential non-representational artifacts; five of the experimental items were designed to be works of art.
 * 2.2. Materials**

The items were selcted from a larger set of 40 items that were pretested on 16 adults. The goal was the test items shouls look like the intended object. A score of 1-7 was given based on how close the artificat resembled the object (1 being 'not at all' and 7 'definitely').
 * 2.3. Pretesting**

"17 undergraduates recruited from an introductory psychology class" (p. 93). - Why this specific demographic. Later it mentions 16 undergraduates tested the materials for the study; was this the same undergraduates (it doesn't specify). I wondered the same thing. I would assume that it was a different group.
 * 2.4. Procedure**
 * Children were tested in a private room at their preschool, and adults were tested at their university. Participants were randomly assigned Intentional or Accidential condition. Participants were given four control items, and were asked yes/no questions about control items.**

"private room [...] individually in a quiet room [...] participants were randomly assigned" (p. 94). - 1. Private room for children, but only a quiet room for adults? 2. How were participants randomized?

"Children indicated their response verbally; adults wrote their response on a page in an answer booklet" (p. 95). - Does verbally answering vs. writing affect responses? Also, what about the test-like (sounding) answer booklet; does this too affect responses? Good point, I think the idea that the children verbally responded was because they could not write. But one group could not write wouldn't it have made sense to have the adults answer verbally too? Does this have something to do with the "quiet room" vs. "private room"?

"Naming the object as artwork was quite rare among the children, but increased to nearly half of the naming responses among the adults. This developmental pattern might have an uninteresting explanation (‍‍‍‍‍e.g. perhaps children do not know artwork names such as `painting' ‍‍‍‍‍), but it could conceivably reflect a more revealing conceptual difference. For example, perhaps children are seeking to name the specific entity that is represented, while adults are more interested in naming representational kinds" (p. 98).
 * 3. Results**

"But we find instead that intentionality is salient even when naming everyday objects, as 'a knife', 'a hat', and so on" (p. 99). -Intend is always considered with or without art.
 * 4. Discussion**

"None of this is to deny that children are sensitive to both shape and function, and that such cues usually suffice for the normal naming and categorization of artifacts. But our results are consistent with the theory that shape and function are important only because they are such reliable cues to creator's intention" (p. 99).

"But our results are consistent with the theory that shape and function are important only because they are such reliable cues to creator's intention" (p. 99). -Shape and function are clues to discover what the artists' intention(s) are.

"Landau et al. (1998), who found a shape bias, and Kemler-Nelson et al. (1995), who found a function bias." (p. 99)

‍‍‍‍"The proposal that children are trying to make sense of creator's intent when naming artifacts raises the question of where this understanding comes from. It might be in part due to the child's experience with language; adults use artifact names such as `chair', `clock', and `toy' to describe diverse sets of items, and this might motivate children to seek cues to category membership that go beyond shape and function.

A different possibility (but consistent with the above) is that children's intention-based understanding of artifact names is a by-product of two more general aspects of their mental life. Firstly, they are `naive essentialists', in that they seek to understand the superficial properties of objects in terms of deeper, more essential aspects of their nature.

Secondly, they are highly interested in the goals and desires of other people.

Together these two aspects of children's thought might explain why they see the intent of an artifact's creator as an important consideration when deciding how an object should be named" (p. 99-100). ‍‍‍‍

3.3. Naming responses to art items

"A final issue concerns the nature of the naming responses to the art items. As noted above, two kinds of naming responses were included: those that named the resulting object as artwork (e.g. `painting', `statue', `drawing', `decoration'), and those that named what was represented (e.g. `fireworks', `a fish', `a man'). As shown in Table 4, naming the object as artwork was quite rare among the children, but increased to nearly half of the naming responses among the adults. This developmental pattern might have an uninteresting explanation (e.g. perhaps children do not know artwork names such as `painting'), but it could conceivably reflect a more revealing conceptual difference. For example, perhaps children are seeking to name the specifc entity that is represented, while adults are more interested in naming representational kinds. This issue awaits further research."

-My first thought when trying to understand this was not that it was some deep conceptual difference between adults and children but more of a conditioning factor. Children are often held up an image in a book or whatever and asked "What is this?" They arent often shown a picture of a dog and told "This is art" but rather "Look at the fluffy dog." I feel like this trend of trying to dig deep in the responses of the participants was apparent throughout the article.

Was he quoting the same Bloom we are reading? I really like the detail it gives us about the experiments, including the actual questions they asked the groups.
 * Questions/Statements:**

Im trying to figure out the point of this study. I understand what they did but I dont think I fully understand what they sought to prove.

This article gave us an experiment with an experimental group and a control group.
 * Talk with other groups about:**

The control group was only given a description of how the object came to be and asked what it looked like and if it was an object; Example: (Spoon): George had a piece of metal. He carefully sawed out a piece and shaped it with special tools. When he was done, this is what it looked like. Is it a spoon?

The experimental group were given two sets of objects, "artifacts" and "art items"

The experiment results showed that if the subject was given a story of accidental creation they were more likely to give a material description of the object(what the object was made of) rather than a functional description of the object(what the object is used for) If the subject was given a story of purposeful creation they were more likely to give a functional description of the object rather than a material description. The subjects varied in age from age 3, age 5, and undergraduate age. The children still gave the same results although the numbers were not as significantly different. The children did not name the object as an artwork near as often as the adults, perhaps because the children simply do not know artwork names such as "painting". Or as someone in our group said its because as they grow up the parents condition them to tell what the picture is of rather than that it is a picture or "artwork".

Table 4 Naming responses to artwork, as the number (proportion) of all trials: Naming the object as artwork (NOA) versus Naming what is represented (NWR)

Intent is always considered, with or without art
 * |||||| Intentional |||||| Accidental ||
 * =  ||= NOA (%) ||= NWR (%) ||= No. of naming responses ||= NOA (%) ||= NWR(%) ||= No of naming responses ||
 * = 3-year-olds ||= 14 ||= 86 ||= 21 ||= 17 ||= 83 ||= 12 ||
 * = 5-year-olds ||= 10 ||= 90 ||= 30 ||= 18 ||= 82 ||= 11 ||
 * = Adults ||= 47 ||= 53 ||= 32 ||= 67 ||= 33 ||= 3 ||