Chimpanzee vs. Human child learning

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIAoJsS9Ix8&NR=1

Basically they have 2 boxes (one black and one transparent), child and a chimp. They are both instructed to follow elaborate set of bogus procedures to get a treat. When they give them black boxes, child and chimp do the same procedure, but when they give them hollow one, which shows these actions do nothing, chimp goes directly for a treat, and child still blindly goes trough the same procedure.

Now, I feel if I were given box at the same age, I am quite sure I would go direct for the candy. There is a scene where bunch of children show each other "the procedure". I felt some kind of deep horror looking at this, as it reminded me of childhood. You see bunch of kids doing something obviously stupid, and it is impossible to explain them why that doesn't make sense. And worse yet, you are penalized for doing things your, sometimes better way.

I would go as far as suggesting there is no physical problem with us except no genuine (hardwired) interest in copying others if there is no direct reason for it.

So, do you think this kind of behaviour is autistic trait? What would you do as a kid? Are we (if it turns out most people is) "stuck" on evolutionary ladder?

i'm confident same, of course no way to prove this without going back in time. but it was agonizing to watch.

i've never done anything without questioning why it works. i might have figured it out then used it against other kids to prove my intelligence over them, but i can't imagine i would have even made it past the black box without stopping to ask "why do you have to tap on the box? it doesn't do anything"

i think these kids are very gullible.

It could be that the child is responding to social demands from the instructor. The chimp just wants the treat, but the child also wants to please the teacher or at least not risk having the treat taken away because they didn't follow instructions. It would depend on how the instructions were given.

Yeah. And the kid probably knows it's being filmed.

It could be because the kids are surrounded in they everyday life of "magical" devices which they don't know how it's work, so it could be logical from they point of view that the box really need to be tapped for some unknow reasons.

I did the same, and was always questioning 'Why?'. But it always puzzled me that some kids were very intelligent but still behaved the same.

In second movie, it looks like chimp is trying to figure out how box works while going trough procedure.



I'm correcting myself it turned out that I suggested kids didn't have the intelligence to "bypass" instructions. It is reasonable to assume they knew they can take the treat right away second time. And exactly this is what terrifies me most. They seemed to have absolutely no interest in figuring how the box worked, and how to optimize process to get final result. Just how to follow instructions obediently. Seems like hardwired need/ability to bypass logic in order to please superior, let's call it DOUBLETHINK

And they probably did experiment before, and just staged it for filming.