教育心理类雅思阅读：Nowyouknow.docVIP

教育心理类雅思阅读：Now you know 　　When should you teach children, and when should you let them explore? 　　IT IS one of the oldest debates in education. Should teachers tell pupils the way things are or encourage them to find out for themselves? Telling children truths about the world helps them learn those facts more quickly. Yet the efficient learning of specific facts may lead to the assumption that when the adult has finished teaching, there is nothing further to learn—because if there were, the adult would have said so. A study just published in Cognition by Elizabeth Bonawitz of the University of California, Berkeley, and Patrick Shafto of the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, suggests that is true. 　　Dr Bonawitz and Dr Shafto arranged for 85 four- and five-year-olds to be presented, during a visit to a museum, with a novel toy that looked like a tangle of coloured pipes and was capable of doing many different things. They wanted to know whether the way the children played with the toy depended on how they were instructed by the adult who gave it to them. 　　One group of children had a strictly pedagogical introduction. The experimenter said Look at my toy! This is my toy. I’m going to show you how my toy works. She then pulled a yellow tube out of a purple tube, creating a squeaking sound. Following this, she said, Wow, see that? This is how my toy works! and then demonstrated the effect again. 　　With a second group of children, the experimenter acted differently. She interrupted herself after demonstrating the squeak by saying she had to go and write something down, thus suggesting that she might not have finished the demonstration. With a third group, she activated the squeak as if by accident. To a fourth, the toy was simply presented with the comment, Wow, see this toy? Look at this! 　　After these varied introductions, the children were left with the toy and allowed to play. They might discover that, as well as the squeaker, the toy had a button inside one t