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One of the great comedy routines of all times was written and performed by Abbott and Costello.
Who's On First
is a dialogue between a new coach and his buddy, who wants to learn the names of the team's players. It begins:
- Abbott: Well Costello, I'm going to New York with you. You know Bucky Harris, the Yankee's manager, gave me a job as coach for as long as you're on the team.
- Costello: Look Abbott, if you're the coach, you must know all the players.
- Abbott: I certainly do.
- Costello: Well you know I've never met the guys. So you'll have to tell me their names, and then I'll know who's playing on the team.
(snip)
- Abbott: Well, let's see, we have on the bags, Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third...
- Costello: That's what I want to find out.
- Abbott: I say Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.
- Costello: Are you the manager?
- Abbott: Yes.
- Costello: You gonna be the coach too?
- Abbott: Yes.
- Costello: And you don't know the fellows' names?
- Abbott: Well I should.
- Costello: Well then who's on first?
- Abbott: Yes.
- Costello: I mean the fellow's name.
- Abbott: Who.
- Costello: The guy on first.
- Abbott: Who.
- Costello: The first baseman.
- Abbott: Who.
- Costello: The guy playing...
- Abbott: Who is on first!
- Costello: I'm asking YOU who's on first.
- Abbott: That's the man's name.
- Costello: That's who's name?
- Abbott: Yes.
I was reminded of the routine the other night.
Flashcards and Perspective Taking
I was writing a lecture on adolescent cognition when my youngest asked me to test him on Spanish. He was working on the verb tener, which means 'to have'. Spanish verbs, like those in English, change depending on who you're talking about. For example, in English we say 'I have', but also say 'he has'.
In Spanish, verbs change even more with different subjects (there are others, but this piece is about middle school cognition, not about Spanish).
- I have Yo tengo
- He has El tiene
- You have Tu tienes
- We have Nosotros tenemos
So we started to practice:
- Mom: He has?
- Youngest: El tiene
- Mom: We have?
- Youngest: Nosotros tenemos
- Mom: I have?
- Youngest: Tu tienes
- Mom: No, tu means 'you'. Yo means 'me' or 'I'. How do you say 'I have'?
- Youngest (getting annoyed): Tu tienes
- Mom: (now confused). No. How about 'you have'?
- Youngest: Yo tengo
We went round and round, both of us getting more confused. Then I started to laugh. The answer was in my lecture on perspective taking.
I had thought Youngest just couldn't remember 'yo' meant 'me'. He KNEW that. He just didn't know what I was asking him. I was asking him to translate the phrase 'I know'. The quotation marks magically turn the phrase 'I know' essentially into a noun - something - almost an object - that you can talk about. I wanted him to literally tell me how HE would say 'I know'.
What he HEARD was me asking him to say that I (mom, the speaker) know. And that's what he said YOU know.
I know that you know that I know . . .
Well here we were.
Developmental Change in Perspective Taking
In my lecture, I was writing about adolescent cognition. One of the changes that occurs as kids move from childhood into adolescence is that they become much better at perspective taking. Young children think that everyone thinks the same thing that they do. A first grader is convinced that a Harry Potter Wii game is the PERFECT gift for Mom's Valentine Day.
A middle schooler would probably know differently. They realize that other people perceive, think, and like different things than they do. This requires them to simultaneously:
- know what they think
- know what the other person is perceiving or attending to
- predict, from what they know of the other person's intentions, what this will cause the other person to think or attend to
In our flashcard fiasco, we'd run into a hole in my son's ability to do that. He knew what I was asking, but not from my perspective. He couldn't simultaneously think about his perspective, my perspective, and translating Spanish all at the same time. (Of course you could argue it took me a while to figure out what he was thinking too. My understanding of the 'flashcard translation' script overwhelmed my ability to see things from his point of view.)
The ability to take other's perspective requires you to think about two (or more) ideas simultaneously (my perspective/your perspective), the ability to infer how these differences will interact with the other's characteristics, the ability to predict how this will influence behavior. It requires thinking relativistically.
This is one of the triumphs of adolescent cognition, and one of the reasons that middle schoolers argue so much more effectively (and annoyingly) than their younger brothers and sisters. (See What Every Middle School Parent Should Know: Adolescents Are Like Lawyers.)
The Imaginary Audience
During the transition from childhood to adolecence, kids often stumble along the way. No transition is smooth.
One of the prevailing stereotypes about adolescence is their profoud self-consciousness. Elkind referred to this as the 'imaginary audience'. He argued that a middle school dance was a roomful of people each of whom thinks they are the center of attention.
Any middleschooler who knows they have a tear in their underwear is convinced that every other person around them knows it too.
They know that other people are thinking about them (something younger kids may not really be aware of). They know what they, themselves, know. But they haven't yet developed the full ability to know that what they know is not what the other person knows.
Research has suggested that all of us - kids, teens, and adults - have problems with this. We all think others are more similar to us than they really are. But middle schoolers do seem particularly prone to this problem.
And one of their charms is that you can still see those childhood patterns of behavior and of cognition peek through in little ways, even as they move forward in others.
© 2010 Nancy Darling. All Rights Reserved
