Children's (Mis)understanding of the Balance Beam (Online Edition)

Abstract

The balance-scale task, proposed by Inhelder and Piaget, illustrates children understanding of weight-distance relationships. Piaget used the clinical interview method in order to investigate children's reasoning. Over the last five decades, Siegler's Rule-Assessment Approach has been used to explain children reasoning in the balance-scale task according to rules children would use to solve the task. However, this approach does not take into account some key perceptual properties of the task. This study evaluates whether different task demands would alter children's errors. Forty children (twenty children aged 4–5 years and twenty children aged 9–10 years) predicted the movement of both arms of 16 balance-scale problems administered online. Nine 4–5-year-olds produced non-plausible responses whereas none of the 9–10-year-olds provided non-plausible responses. These results seem to indicate a basic misunderstanding of the scale from some younger children, one that eludes traditional measures used with this task.

A survey on the challenges, limitations, and opportunities of online testing of infants and young children during the COVID-19 pandemic: using our experiences to improve future practices

“…From 2020 to the writing of this paper, researchers have published papers focused on specific aspects of the online testing of infants and children. Most notably, a special issue of Frontiers in Psychology in 2021 ( Empirical Research at a Distance: New Methods for Developmental Science , edited by Amso, Cusack, Oakes, Tsuji, and Kirkham; see Tsuji et al, 2022 ) has 39 papers documenting individual labs’ use of online testing for research topics that include working memory (e.g., Ross-Sheehy et al, 2021 ), language (e.g., Ozernov-Palchik et al, 2022 ), emotion perception (e.g., Yamamoto et al, 2021 ), object physics ( Filion and Sirois, 2021 ), eating behaviors (e.g., Venkatesh and DeJesus, 2021 ), number ( Silver et al, 2021 ), theory of mind ( Schidelko et al, 2021 ), and parent–child interaction ( Shin et al, 2021 ). Other papers have focused specifically on a particular testing platform or stimulus-presentation software, including Zoom (e.g., Bambha and Casasola, 2021 ) and LookIt (e.g., Lapidow et al, 2021 ; Nelson and Oakes, 2021 ), or more broadly, the development of a “large-scale, shared infrastructure for developmental science” ( Sheskin et al, 2020 ).…”

The impact of the balance beam on early age balance skills at DBL Academy Yogyakarta

“…Children can use balance beams, which are sturdy boards with support beneath, to assist their walking. Children consistently have various techniques, each with potential applications, at their disposal [22]. Freeform balance beam activity offers children an ideal opportunity to nurture unique creativity [23].…”