Psycho : for the children’s stories are more uplifting with the human characters

Happy Tree Friends, DR.

Published the 21.08.2017 at 07: 45

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développementenfantspédopsychiatreéducation

“This is the story of a Little Raccoon, a ratonne selfish and competitive, which is berries in the forest. When she sees her friends arrive, she prefers to hide behind a bush to keep it for her. Little Raccoon learns to share ?… ”

All the parents read this kind of stories edifying to their children. Not content to make them taste the joys of narrative and the imagination, they are also an opportunity to teach them with, surreptitiously and as long as there is still time, values such as kindness, solidarity, sharing…

Yet, many of these stories involve animals, anthropomorphic, instead of human beings. Undoubtedly it is necessary to see the influence of Walt Disney, and before him that of Aesop. But is there reason to rely on mother Nature to build the small men ?

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That is the question, a little unexpected, as were asked three researchers from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (Canada), in an article recently published in Developmental Science. To find out, there’s nothing like an inspiring story of ratonne “washer” selfish. And so here is our researchers who undertake to read Little Raccoon learns how to share to 96 toddlers in their lab in Toronto.

Little Raccoon learns to share by Mary Packard

The children, aged 4 to 6 years of age, were divided into three groups. The first group was entitled to the original story. In the second, on the other hand, the book had been rewritten to incorporate the human characters, and the illustrations change to match. As for the third, the control group, he had to be content with a dark history of small seed.

Of course, we still had to find a way to assess if the lesson of sharing instilled by Little Raccoon or its homologous human had been well learned. For this, small subjects have been distributing stickers before and after the study. They could benefit another child (or imaginary) who had not had the chance to be selected…

 
The children are great

You guessed it, Winnie The pooh and his ilk can go get dressed. The children who were entitled to the story with the human characters were much more generous than the other : a sticker difference. It does not look anything like that, but it is a lot, especially when the average donation revolves around two stickers.

Worse, the toddlers in the other two groups, raccoon, and small-seeded, are shown to be less sharers after hearing the story ! That the souls anxious to be reassured : it is rather a mark of the impatience of children that a deleterious effect of the narratives in question.

“These results suggest that children do not interpret the characters as anthropomorphic as being similar to “, conclude the authors, who do not advise to the fantastic books with the pestle. The moral of this story is that children would be looking better in a story when it is… realistic. And so much for the imagination.