According to the New York Times’ article, Trying to Close the Knowledge Gap, Word by Word (2014), the city of Providence, Rhode Island has plans to implement a program called “Providence Talks” which plans to decrease the “knowledge gap” in wealthy and poor children. How? The program requires children to wear a device that records words that are spoken from “live human conversation” around them. The intent is to use the recorder to aid parents in teaching their children words and increase their knowledge base. Data is then analyzed to provide feedback to the parents.
As the PSU WC Lesson commentary (2014) describes, our knowledge is attained through our environment. As we learn more and more from the things around us, we being to categorize the information and eventually build levels to it. The research by Rosch “introduced the idea of basic level categories”: (Goldstein, 2011, p. 247) Global (Superordinate), Basic and Specific (Subordinate). As our knowledge increases, the more detail and specific information we know. For example, we may first learn about animals which is the Global level, then as we gain more knowledge, we learn about cats, which is the Basic level. Eventually we may learn even more detail on cats such as Siamese, Persian, etc. In order to build the more specific levels, we must first build information at the Global (Superordinate) level. The Exemplar Theory states that we store knowledge based on the examples encountered in our experiences (PSU WC, 2014).
Both of these theories are being exemplified with the “Providence Talks” programs. By having the children wear the recorder, it serves to digitally store knowledge as it is experienced in their environment (similar to how the knowledge is stored in the brain). Parents are then aiding them in building their basic level categories by engaging in conversation. Ultimately, the goal of the program is to encourage parents to engage in conversations with their children in order to increase their knowledge base by utilizing their environments. While most of the programs mentioned in the article refer to lower socio-economic groups, the premise is feasible for all parents.
References
Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition. Wadsworth, Inc.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2014). PSYCH 256 Lesson 10: Knowledge. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp14/psych256/002/content/11_lesson/05_page.html
Rich, M. (2014, March 25). Trying to Close a Knowledge Gap, Word by Word. The New York Times. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/us/trying-to-close-a-knowledge-gap-word-by-word.html?_r=0
This is one wonderful way of monitoring the knowledge of the children from one area to another. What influenced the children? What enhanced their learning? After witnessing children from the same background demonstrating a wide array of responses to the same learned information, I wanted to take this research one step further. What other area’s affected a child’s ability to learn and at what rate?
What are the kids talking about? I have six grandchildren that range from the age nine months to seven years of age. This holiday I took a few minutes to sit, listen, and ponder the understanding their conversations and questions.
My granddaughter is five-years-old and a very spiritual child. During this last year, her conversations have centered on the church, Jesus, and the Lord. She attends church generally twice a week with her eighteen month old brother and seven year old sister. Both of the elder children are exposed to pretty much the same information at church. However, the way the context is received by the children versus how it is reflected back by each child is quite different.
The five-year-old found an egg that was sky blue with what resembled a light blue cross on the side of the egg. The cross was probably formed from angled drying process. Both girls were intrigued by the egg but displayed very different understanding of the incident. The seven-year-old commented on the how pretty the impression was that the napkin had made on the egg. And, the five-year-old took the egg immediately to her mother and stated, “Jesus, got up today and left an egg with a cross just for me.” One reason for the children’s two different interpretations of information my have something Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory.
Piaget investigated how child adds up knowledge. There are two parts of cognitive development, which are the key concepts of the theory and the stages of development of cognition. During the part one of cognition (key concepts) is children use schemas, which are pictures in the mind with a collection of impressions, concepts, and actions which all work together to adjust to a child’s environment, assimilation and accommodation, either integrating knowledge into pre-existing schema or altering schema in response to the new knowledge, and equilibration, the balance between assimilation and accommodation that is building up more schema structures.
Part two, is the stages of cognitive development. During the stages based on age, a child can comprehend the meaning of some things but not be aware to other things. Piaget’s theory has four stages; Birth to two years old, sensorimotor stage, the infant builds numerous simple ideas about what exists and happens; preoperational stage (2-7 years); child not able to imagine non-presentational ideas and still needs physical situations; concrete operational stage (7-11 years of age), the child’s process of something related to volume, weight, length, and number develops. The child starts to lose the notion that they are the center of everything; and formal operational stage (starting 11-15 years), cognitive structure similar to an adult and is described by abstract theoretical logic.
Based on Piaget’s theory the girls ages five and seven are at different stages developmentally. The seven-year-old has been introduced to new concepts and situations that greatly altered her perception of the incident from that of her sister’s.
References
Retrieved from http://www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/people/scientificstaff/denis/PDFs/Analogical_Reasoning
Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition. Wadsworth, Inc.