What’s in a child’s head? 4 visual experiments

33 experiments included in the book “What’s on his mind” (Mann, Ivanov, and Ferber, 2016), psychologist Amber Ankowski and her husband, copywriter Andy Ankowski, didn’t invent it themselves: they took classic, proven child psychology experiments and simplified them so that parents could do them themselves and get to know their child better. These games will help you understand his thinking at different stages of development, see how he develops, and just have fun together!

Pass the tests

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Experiment #1: Olives and Cookies

Ages 14-18 Months: Testing Social Skills

Young children love what they love and do not hide their preferences. But the fact that other people may like something completely different, they do not yet know. And then one day they begin to understand it. Do this experiment twice: once when your child is 14 months old, and then 4 months later – and see what happens!

What you need? A plate with a treat that your child will definitely like (for example, fish-shaped crackers). 2. A plate of something he definitely doesn’t like (say, olives or corn). 3. A tray that will fit both plates.

How does it work? Set up two plates of food so that the child can see them, and offer to taste the food during the game. It is not necessary that he does this, the main thing is to give him the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity (or hunger) so that it does not distract him later. Now sit opposite the child and place a tray of plates between you. Try something that your child doesn’t like by putting on an expression of obvious, exaggerated pleasure, as well as making sounds that he knows show your admiration for food: “Mmmm! Corn! Mmmm, olives!” Now try what your child likes with an expression of obvious, exaggerated displeasure: “Ugh! Crackers! Beee!” Then stretch out your palm and ask the baby: “Can you give me something?” If he takes something and gives it to you, congratulations! If you don’t give right away, ask until you get it. The experiment is over!

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So what did the child give you? If you did this experiment when he was 14 months old, then he most likely offered those treats that you just “didn’t like at all”! And with a smile. But do not look for a catch in this: he just gave you the food that he himself likes. And at this age, he is not able to share what he likes and someone else. That is why this experiment is interesting to repeat after 4 months. After the child is one and a half years old, he will most likely behave completely differently: he will decide to give you what you like! The ability of the child to overcome his negative attitude towards the dish that you liked shows that he began to be aware of how others think and understand that the desires of others may not coincide with his own. This is very impressive, given the age of the baby and how difficult it is to understand that different people can have different thoughts, feelings and beliefs, even for older children. Only after the age of five do they begin to understand this and act in accordance with this in most life situations. (Yes, children: sometimes even adults find it hard to understand.)

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Experiment #2: Paired Items

Ages 14–24 months: Checking speech development

This experiment will provide your child with intensive word learning training, thanks to which his vocabulary will be replenished every day!

What you need?

1. A pair of objects of the same shape, but differing in size, color, texture. Example: a small blue plastic fork and a large silver fork.
2. Three additional pairs of objects chosen in the same way: two balls, two cups, two dice, etc.
3. Any four toys or household items – anything, as long as they are not analogues of the paired items you have chosen.

How does it work? Create a familiar environment for playing with your child. You can sit on the floor or at a table, and the baby can sit on a high chair. Take any two of your chosen paired items (say, forks) and play them for five minutes as usual, with one exception: during this time you need to repeat their name at least ten times. Here are some ideas to help you:

• Pass paired objects to each other (“Here are the forks, take them! Can you pass the forks to dad?”).
• Hide paired items behind your back, and then effectively get them out (“Where are the forks? Ah, here they are!”).
• Pretend that paired objects are flying (“The forks are flying!”) Or walking on the table (“Aaaaaaaa! The forks are alive!”).

Turn on your imagination and come up with something else! The options are endless.

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About halfway through this game, take out one of the unpaired items or toys. Show it to your child with the words: “It’s not a fork!”, put it aside and continue the game with paired objects until five minutes are up. Repeat this game with other pairs of objects. It is not necessary to play all in a row – the experiment can be stretched over time. So why will your child learn to memorize words during this game? Everything is simple here. When you name two different objects with the same word – for example, “fork” – the child instinctively tries to determine what unites them. In other words, looking for similarities in them. Two completely different forks have only a common shape. So he remembers that “fork” implies a forked shape. Then he meets three other pairs of objects (say, balls, cups and cubes) and learns that they are also called that because of their shape. “Balls” are in the form of balls, “cups” – cups, “cubes” – cubes. Having summarized all the experience gained during the experiment, the child understands that there is a general rule that says “has a form,” or that the names of objects are determined by the form. And your little smartie now knows exactly what to look for when remembering the name of an item! Having taught your child such an important lesson in learning new words, you can expect impressive results. He will quickly remember not only these words, but also those that you did not teach him. And what is the result? His vocabulary will grow by leaps and bounds, and before you know it, he will be ready to take the entrance exams to the university – about fifteen years earlier than usual!

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Experiment #3: More is Less

2-6 years: testing problem-solving skills

What you need? Table and three cookies.

How does it work? Sit at the table across from the child with two cookies in front of you and one in front of the child. Ask him: “Who has more cookies: me or you? Or equally? Since your child is a genius, he should answer that you have more (and this is clearly unfair). In front of the child, take his cookies, break into two halves and put them in front of him. Ask: “Now who has more cookies: me or you? Or equally?

Although your normally very intelligent toddler saw you breaking his only cookie into two halves right in front of him, he most likely replied that you now have equal numbers of cookies. And he was very happy about it, by the way! Feel free to take a victory run around the room if you feel like it: you’ve discovered a way to save half your sweet tooth. Your child’s reaction to this test is quite typical: children at this age easily fall into the trap when it comes to the number of objects. But why do they make this mistake? In fact, this is a consequence of two features of thinking inherent in children under seven years of age. Firstly, they can only focus on one aspect of the situation at a time (in our case, the number of pieces of biscuit each of you have) and therefore fail to take into account other important details (like the fact that two halves take up much less space on the plate than your two integers). The second feature: the inability to realize that, although the object has changed externally, it has retained one of the most important properties – volume. These features of thinking are manifested in many situations. Show your child two identical glasses of water, and then pour the water from one of them into a wider and lower container – and he will decide that there is much less water than in a glass. Over time, your child will stop making such mistakes and will no longer be fooled by breaking cookies into pieces. He will understand that certain properties of the object are preserved even when its appearance changes. His thinking will become more flexible. So be careful: from now on, in response to your “because I said so”, you may be given a logical argument about why your argument is not convincing. Start preparing counterarguments!

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Experiment #4: Creative Thinking

4 years and older: testing creativity

What you need? 1. Spoon. 2. Toy in the form of an animal. 3. Sheets of paper with lines, zigzags – fragments of drawings. 4. Felt pens, markers or colored pencils.

How does it work? In fact, this is not one experiment, but three! Each of its parts is completely independent of the other two, so you can conduct them in any order and at any time convenient for you.

Part 1: Give your child a spoon and ask them to come up with as many uses for it as they can. Say that he may offer you new options in the future.

Part 2 Show your child an animal toy and ask him, “How could you improve it? What can be done to make it even funnier? (It doesn’t matter if some of his suggestions will be impossible to implement.) Then ask the child the question: “Can you think of another way to use it?” Add that you can think about the answers as much as you like and offer them to you.

Part 3. Give your child markers or pencils and sheets of paper with zigzags and lines and ask him to complete the drawings.

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If these experiments sound like fun games to play with your kids, you’re right! But it’s also a great way to test his creativity. In each of them, you need to analyze the answers and reactions of the child, guided by the following criteria:

• The number of options. How many ideas did the child come up with? The more diverse those of them that answer the question, the more developed abilities the baby has. In addition, there is a relationship between the number of responses and their quality: as a rule, later ideas are more interesting. And if the child continues to offer them – this is a good sign!
• The uniqueness of options. Were the child’s suggestions simple (say, eating soup with a spoon) or creative (say, using it as a pool for Thumbelina)? In the drawing task, the uniqueness of the child’s reaction is determined by the non-trivial use of lines (say, the curve becomes part of the ring of asteroids around the planet in a complex space scene, and not just the mouth of a smiling face). Breaking boundaries, drawing outside of squares, and any other unusual use of space should also be considered a display of creativity! Additional points for the child should bring humorous, ironic or emotional responses.
• Degree of detail. How detailed are the child’s responses? If he offered to turn his teddy bear into a time machine, do you have the feeling that you are ready to start making blueprints for it immediately? The fact that the child is ready to give you a lot of details speaks of his developed creative abilities. The presence of abstract, fantastic and other fictitious details testifies to the same.

The same assessment system can be used throughout a person’s life, not just at preschool age. But creativity seems to change over time. For example, in a task with line fragments, very young children may initially draw inside the squares and not even include existing lines in them. As they get older, they begin to copy line segments, then continue and close them to get simple shapes, and later turn the fragments into more complex and creative drawings. Some research shows that problem solving skills peak in elementary school and then begin to decline. Although creativity changes over time, a person’s relative degree of ingenuity compared to his peers remains virtually constant throughout his life. So if your aspiring artist is showing a lot of creativity, there’s a good chance he’ll be imaginative as an adult.