<story><title>Helen Keller on her life before self-consciousness (1908)</title><url>http://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-helen-keller-on-her.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kqr</author><text>James Gleick in &lt;i&gt;The Information&lt;/i&gt; also describes cases of the effect of traditional literacy on complexity&amp;#x2F;abstraction of thought.&lt;p&gt;He claims that literacy is nearly a prerequisite for things like zeroth-order logical reasoning and understanding of abstract shapes. Two examples he gives:&lt;p&gt;- Some illiterate people are told that all bears in the north are white, that Greenland is a country in the north, then they are asked what colours bears in Greenland have. They answer, &amp;quot;Different regions have differently coloured bears. I haven&amp;#x27;t been to Greenland. But I have seen a brown bear.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I would have said, &amp;quot;Based on the information you gave me, I would guess white.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- When shown a rectangle and asked what shape it is some illiterate answer things like &amp;quot;a door&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;a playing card&amp;quot; but struggle to find things doors and playing cards have in common.&lt;p&gt;I go to the abstract shapes immediately when I&amp;#x27;m shown drawings by my son. It&amp;#x27;s almost at a point where it feels like my logical&amp;#x2F;abstract reasoning stands in the way of creativity.&lt;p&gt;----&lt;p&gt;But I don&amp;#x27;t know how much this is personality (I happen to have a knack for logical&amp;#x2F;abstract reasoning and I happened to learn to read when I was very young) and how much is an effect of reading. After all, anthropologists are great at the concrete rather than abstract, but maybe they get lots of training in it. I&amp;#x27;ve also heard the Japanese are better at it.&lt;p&gt;TFA clearly postulates it has more to do with the kind of vocabulary, or maybe it&amp;#x27;s on an increasing scale with more language.</text></item><item><author>atum47</author><text>This reminded me of a story my professor once told us back in college. I was studying sign language and she is deaf. She told us growing up in the old days they didn&amp;#x27;t had specialized schools for deaf people (since they could read?!) so she attended regular school and was not doing ok. She struggled a lot until she finally got the attention that she needed from a teacher who was able to instruct her in sign language (which believe you or not is Brazil&amp;#x27;s second official language). Before that she told us she was not able to have complex thoughts. She didn&amp;#x27;t know her father had a name, for instance. She thought his &amp;quot;name&amp;quot; was daddy. She is a brilliant woman and I&amp;#x27;m glad I attended her class and also, that she was able to find someone who helped her, growing up.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smeej</author><text>This makes me wonder about what turned out to be a pivotal moment in my early life. It was the day I first realized other people have their own minds, and that I could predict with some degree of accuracy what was in them.&lt;p&gt;My dad wrote the numbers 1 through 4 on a piece of paper, then asked me to pick one, but not tell him which I&amp;#x27;d chosen. Once I had it, he said, &amp;quot;You picked 3, didn&amp;#x27;t you?&amp;quot; I was dumbfounded. &amp;quot;How did you do that??&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Most people don&amp;#x27;t like to be out on the edges. It makes them uncomfortable. So they don&amp;#x27;t pick 1 or 4. And most people, like you, are right-handed, so they pick 3 over 2.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;OK, OK, do it again.&amp;quot; (This was the moment a flash of magic happened in my head.)&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You picked 1 this time, didn&amp;#x27;t you?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, I picked 3 again because I knew you would think I would pick 1 this time.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;With a fear in his eyes that I only later discovered came from the fact that his own sense of safety depended on being the smartest person in the room, he said, &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;re only 3. I don&amp;#x27;t think you&amp;#x27;re supposed to know how to do that yet.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;But here&amp;#x27;s the other thing--I &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; literate when I was 3. Nobody really knows how I picked it up, but one day I told my mom it was my turn to read the stories, and I&amp;#x27;ve been reading fluently ever since. I&amp;#x27;ve been told I read differently than most people even now (blocks of text rather than individual letters or words), but I was definitely reading.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never associated the two events before, nor that maybe I was only able to do one because of the other, but it makes sense of the fact that other kids didn&amp;#x27;t really start to seem reasonable or thoughtful until 1st or 2nd grade. They lived in these imaginary worlds where things didn&amp;#x27;t have to make sense. It seemed like a lot of fun, but I had trouble joining them there. I always assumed both skills just correlated with age, not that one might facilitate the other.&lt;p&gt;My story obviously doesn&amp;#x27;t prove anything, but you&amp;#x27;ve given me an interesting thing to think about today!</text></comment>
<story><title>Helen Keller on her life before self-consciousness (1908)</title><url>http://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-helen-keller-on-her.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kqr</author><text>James Gleick in &lt;i&gt;The Information&lt;/i&gt; also describes cases of the effect of traditional literacy on complexity&amp;#x2F;abstraction of thought.&lt;p&gt;He claims that literacy is nearly a prerequisite for things like zeroth-order logical reasoning and understanding of abstract shapes. Two examples he gives:&lt;p&gt;- Some illiterate people are told that all bears in the north are white, that Greenland is a country in the north, then they are asked what colours bears in Greenland have. They answer, &amp;quot;Different regions have differently coloured bears. I haven&amp;#x27;t been to Greenland. But I have seen a brown bear.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I would have said, &amp;quot;Based on the information you gave me, I would guess white.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- When shown a rectangle and asked what shape it is some illiterate answer things like &amp;quot;a door&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;a playing card&amp;quot; but struggle to find things doors and playing cards have in common.&lt;p&gt;I go to the abstract shapes immediately when I&amp;#x27;m shown drawings by my son. It&amp;#x27;s almost at a point where it feels like my logical&amp;#x2F;abstract reasoning stands in the way of creativity.&lt;p&gt;----&lt;p&gt;But I don&amp;#x27;t know how much this is personality (I happen to have a knack for logical&amp;#x2F;abstract reasoning and I happened to learn to read when I was very young) and how much is an effect of reading. After all, anthropologists are great at the concrete rather than abstract, but maybe they get lots of training in it. I&amp;#x27;ve also heard the Japanese are better at it.&lt;p&gt;TFA clearly postulates it has more to do with the kind of vocabulary, or maybe it&amp;#x27;s on an increasing scale with more language.</text></item><item><author>atum47</author><text>This reminded me of a story my professor once told us back in college. I was studying sign language and she is deaf. She told us growing up in the old days they didn&amp;#x27;t had specialized schools for deaf people (since they could read?!) so she attended regular school and was not doing ok. She struggled a lot until she finally got the attention that she needed from a teacher who was able to instruct her in sign language (which believe you or not is Brazil&amp;#x27;s second official language). Before that she told us she was not able to have complex thoughts. She didn&amp;#x27;t know her father had a name, for instance. She thought his &amp;quot;name&amp;quot; was daddy. She is a brilliant woman and I&amp;#x27;m glad I attended her class and also, that she was able to find someone who helped her, growing up.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>abdullahkhalids</author><text>I checked the reference. The &amp;quot;bears story&amp;quot; is based on work done in 1930s.&lt;p&gt;Psychology, a hundred years later is a shoddy science, despite us having learning quite a lot about how to do decent experiments and field surveys. It&amp;#x27;s very very difficult to tease out replicable effects in human behavior. I would immediately reject any psychology finding from the 1930s, unless it has been replicated more recently.</text></comment>