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Researchers at Vanderbilt University in the United States have carried out a study and found that children learn the solution to a problem best only when they explain it to their mother.
"We've found that by simply listening, a mother helps her child learn. The basic idea is that it is really effective to try to get kids to explain things themselves instead of just telling them the answer.
"Explaining their reasoning, to a parent or perhaps to other people they know, will help them understand the problem and apply what they have learned to other situations," the 'ScienceDaily' quoted lead researcher Bethany Rittle-Johnson as saying.
In fact, the researchers came to the conclusion after analysing the effects of learning on a group of four and five-year-old kids who were shown plastic bugs, and asked to say which one should come next in the series based on colour and type.
The children were told to explain the solution to their moms, to themselves or to simply repeat the answer out loud. The researchers found that explaining the answer to themselves and to their moms improved the kids' ability to solve similar problems later, and that explaining the answer to their moms helped them solve difficult problems.
"We knew that children learn well with their moms or with a peer, but we did not know if that was because they were getting feedback and help. In this study, we just had the children's mothers listen, without providing any assistance.
"We saw that this simple act of listening by mom made a difference in the quality of the children's explanations and how well they could solve more difficult problems later on," Rittle-Johnson said.
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