Study Reveals Preschoolers Outsmart College Students At Figuring Out Technological Gadgets
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Are you smarter than a preschooler?
CBS News reported that researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that preschool-age children were better at figuring out the proper way to use technological gadgets than college students.
The researchers tasked 106 children between ages four and five and 170 college students with figuring out how to use a gadget in which none of the participants had any experience using.
The test was to place different clay shapes into boxes and determine which combination would cause a box to light up and play music.
Reportedly, the children found out the correct combinations much faster than the college students.
Senior study author Alison Gopnikwas quoted in a column last week for the Wall Street Journal saying, "The kids got it. They figured out that the machine might work in this unusual way and so that you should put both blocks on together. But the best and brightest college students acted as if the machine would always follow the common and obvious rule, even when we showed them that it might work differently."
Study author Christopher Lucas, a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, said in a news release."One big question, looking forward, is what makes children more flexible learners? Are they just free from the preconceptions that adults have, or are they fundamentally more flexible or exploratory in how they see the world?"
He concludes, "Regardless, children have a lot to teach us about learning."
