Natural suggestibility in children

Binet, A., & Henri, V. (2011/1894). Natural suggestibility in children. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(2), 394–398.

In past studies, researchers used certain conditions, such as sleep, on their subjects to increase the power of suggestibility on people that were susceptible to it. In this way, researchers caused subjects to have hallucinations, warped concepts etc. while their sense of judgment is paralyzed.

It is known that in a class, a teacher can use suggestion with his words, encouragements actions etc. on his students. This phenomenon can be described as "Natural suggestion", as it occurs on normal situations.

Nicolas, Coollins, Gounden, and Roediger (2010) conducted a research which was done on children. These children were instructed to memorize various lines and later recognize them on a board containing lines of different lengths. The suggestion was done simply by a researcher asking the student: "Are you sure it is the correct line?" This suggestion is similar to the kind of suggestion a teacher uses on his pupils, to reinforce their answers and test their responses.

The researchers tested the effects of suggestion in three different ways:

Suggestion by a preconceived idea

In this test, three model lines were subsequently shown to children. Then they had to find these lines one after the other among other lines of different lengths displayed on a board.

Once the preliminary phase was done, the test was repeated on a second board which was similar to the first, only the third line was excluded. The children were uninformed of the change, and had to discover that by themselves. Either the children noticed the third line was missing, or they did not.

The researchers presumed that the child would believe that the third line existed on the first, and on the second board as well. A child can still notice the change with his eye glance, but furthermore, he must also have the courage to tell the experimenter about the missing line on the second board.

On this test, certain students failed to witness the missing line, although this was due to poor memory or eye glance, and these students were removed from the test during a test run.

In this experiment, it was shown that the younger kids are more susceptible to suggestion, and between the ages of 8 and 11, there seems to be significant difference.

It seems that the child's age and his shyness both contribute to the effects of suggestibility.

Verbal suggestion by the experimenter

In this experiment, a child would have to study lines on a board, and later on he would have to find those lines again through a series of different lines. While the child pronounced the line he would find, the experimenter would cite "Are you really sure? Is it not the next line?" in a unified fashion to all of the children.

As the class level went higher, the children were less susceptible to suggestion, and the question that came from the experimenter affected them less and they did not chose to change their answer. Furthermore, children that gave the right answer prior, were also more reluctant to change their answer, in contrast to students that made the wrong choice.

It is more probable that a kid that made a wrong choice, did so with lack of attention, and thus that child will be more inclined to change his decision.

It was also found, that the warning that came from the experimenter caused some children to feel encouraged to make the right choices, thus making them more focused for remembering the next lines and increasing their efficiency.

Suggestion in collective experiments

In this last experiment, students were divided into groups of four, and they set in front of the board side by side. The students were asked to answer simultaneously if the board contained the memorized line on the board.

The effect that would cause children to copy the answer of their peers was called the "contagious effect". This contagious effect was more visible in the younger children, and almost all of them gave unanimous answers. The more the age of the student increased, though, the more that student would give an independent answer.

Furthermore, it was shown that collective answers were better and more accurate than individual answers.

To summarize these experiments, it was discovered that the strength of the suggestion is affected by the age of the student, more than his memory capabilities.