Adults may have more knowledge. But children are better learners. In her 18-minute TED Talk, What Do Babies Think? Berkeley psychologist Alison Gopnik breaks down just how children’s minds are made for learning.
Adults and children pay attention in very different ways. Grown-up attention is a like spotlight: bright, focused and purposeful. Children’s attention is like a lantern: diffused, spread out and shining on multiple places at once.
While we might assume the inability to pay focused attention is a limitation, it also has important advantages. It makes young children humanity’s greatest R&D specialists.
According to Gopnik’s ground-breaking research on the baby brain, babies notice everything. They have an expanded sense of consciousness. As she analogises, being a young child is like exploring a new place, with a new partner, while jacked up on caffeine.
Children are constantly conducting experimental research through play. In fact, four-year-olds are better at learning unusual or unlikely principles than adults.
After all, adult attention is built for efficiency in reaching predetermined goals. By contrast, children are wired to explore. Babies are not after one particular skill or set of facts. Instead, they are drawn to what is novel, new and unanticipated.
Theirs is a perspective we, adults, have much to learn from. Children’s approach to learning makes them uncommonly open, flexible and adaptable—all skills essential for success in the 21st century.
Read more about Gopnik’s work here.
Gopnik’s books, The Philosophical Baby, and The Gardener and the Carpenter are also available from the National Library Board (NLB) Singapore.
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