Children around the world like hide-based games: There is something very exciting about disappearing from the view of another person and becoming "invisible."
However, both developmental psychologists and parents know that preschoolers they are fatally hiding. Interestingly, they often just cover their faces with their hands, leaving the rest of the body visibly exposed.
For a long time, it was thought that this ineffective hiding strategy was proof that younger children are "self-centered" creatures without remedy. Psychologists had the idea that preschoolers cannot distinguish between their own perspective and that of another person and conventional wisdom assumed that children, not being able to see beyond their own point of view, They falsely assumed that other people see the world the same way they do.
Hence, psychologists assumed that children "hide" by covering their eyes because they associate their own lack of vision with those of those around them.
But research in the field of cognitive development psychology is beginning to cast doubt on the hypothesis of childhood egocentrism. We conducted a study among children aged two to four in our laboratory of developing minds at the University of Southern California to examine this hypothesis and our surprising results contradicted the idea that they were bad hiding as a result of their supposed self-centered nature.
Who can see who?
Each of the children in our study sat in front of an adult who covered his eyes or ears with his hands. Next we asked the child if he could see or hear the adult, respectively. Surprisingly, the children claimed that they could not see or hear. The result was the same happened when the adult covered his mouth: in this case the children said they could not speak to them.
Several control experiments were carried out to rule out that the children were confused or had not understood what they were asked: our little objects of study understood the questions and knew exactly what we were asking. His negative responses reflected his conviction that the other person could not be seen, heard or spoken when his eyes, ears or mouth were covered. Although they could perfectly see the person in front of them, they flatly denied being able to perceive it. What is wrong with them?
For young children, direct mutual eye contact is a requirement for one person to see another.It seems that for young children, direct mutual eye contact is a requirement for one person to see another. It is as if his way of thinking is based on the idea that "I can only see you if you can see me too" and vice versa. Our study suggests that when a child "hides" under a blanket, he does not do so because he is self-centered. In fact, children believe it is an effective strategy when other people use it.
His visibility idea is based on bidirectionality: unless two people look into each other's eyes, it is impossible for them to see each other. Unlike egocentrism, young children simply insist on idea of ​​recognition and consideration reciprocally.
The expectation of the participation of both parties
The fact that children seek reciprocity proves that they are not self-centered at all. It is not just that preschoolers can see the world differently, but they use this ability in situations where it is unnecessary or leads to misunderstandings, such as when asked to talk about their own perspective. These incorrect opinions, such as when they say that we cannot see those who have their eyes covered, reveal to what extent the perception that children have in the world depends on other people.
The way in which younger children pretend to hide may seem irrational to us and the answers they gave in our study show that children are unable to interact with a person unless communication is reciprocal: it has to be mutual, so that there is a communication between equals.
We plan to investigate the behavior of children when it comes to hiding directly in the laboratory and see if children who are poorly hiding show more signs of reciprocal communication when playing and conversing than those children at They are better at hiding. We would also like to carry out these experiments with children who show different development patterns from the rest during their early years.
The findings of our study highlight the natural desire of children and their preferences for people in a reciprocal way. Children wait and seek to create situations in which they can engage with other people mutually: they want to interact with people who are not only seen, but also look back at them; with people who not only listen, but also make themselves heard; and with people who not only attend to what we tell them, but can also respond and establish a dialogue.
At least in this regard, young children understand and treat other human beings in a way that is not at all self-centered. On the contrary, the way in which they insist that there be reciprocal treatment shows maturity and can be considered somewhat inspiring. Adults could take note of the way in which the little ones perceive and relate to other people because they are very aware that we all naturally seek constant interaction with other people.
Authors: Henrike Moll, Assistant Professor in Developmental Psychology, University of Southern California (Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences) and Allie Khalulyan, PhD in Philosophy. Student of Developmental Psychology, University of Southern California (Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences).
This article has originally been published in The Conversation. You can read the original article here.
Translated by Silvestre Urbón.
