A scientist working at her lab bench and a six-month-old baby playing with his food might have little in common.After all,the scientist is engaged in serious research to uncover the very nature of physical word, and the baby is,well,just playing right?Perhaps,but some developmental phychologists have argued that this "play" is more like scientific investigation than one might think.
Take a closer look at the baby playing at the table.Each time the bowl of rice is pushed over the table edge,it falls to the ground--and,in the process,it brings out important evidence about how physical objects interact: bowls of rice do not float in the mid-air,but require support to remain stable.It's likely that babies are not born konwing this basic fact of the universe;nor are they clearly taught it.Instead,babies may form an understanding of objects support through repeated experiments and then build on knowledge to learn more about objects interact.
Though their ranges and tools differ,the baby's investigation and the scientist's experiment appear to share the same aim to learn the nature world ,overall approach gathering direct evidence from the world,and logic are my observation what I expected?
Some psychologists suggest that young children learn about more than physical world in this way--that they investigate human psychologe and the rules of language using similar means.For example,it may only through repeated experiments,evidence gathering and finally overturning a theory,that a baby will come to accept the idea that other people can have diffrent views and desires from what he or she has,for example,unlike the child, mommy actually doesn't like Dove chocolate.
Viewing childhood devolopment as a scientific investigation throw light on how children learn,but it also offer an inspiring look at science and scientists.Why do young children and scientists seem to be so much alike? Psychologists have suggested that science as an effort--the desire to explore,explain,and understand our world--it simply something that comes from our babyhood.Perhaps evolution provided human babies with curiousity and nature drive to explain their worlds,and adult scientists simply made use of the same drive that served them as children. The same cognative systems that make young children feel good about figuring something out may have been adopted by adult scientists.As some psychologists put it,"It is not that children are little scientists,but that scientists are big children."
