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That's it – I am not sure that there is a way to actually test this – too many unknown variables. You can study kids of different ages and see what happens – but there are so many other logical explanations – imagination, inability to distinguish fiction from reality, developmental issues….before one can have a huge hypothesis like "Kids are closer to the other side" or whatever, you have to first test little teeny tiny hypothesis.
This is the huge problem among paranormal enthusiasts. What is the theory, exactly?
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Psychologically speaking, children tend to be more suggestible as well. Their imaginations are well developed while their capacity for reason is less developed. A lot of "imaginary friends" are rooted in something the child has been exposed to (movies, television, stories, fairytales, etc.) They are capable of creating an entire world from a line in a book, but lack the reasoning ability to totally separate that world from reality. They are also far more likely to pick up on cues from the people around them than we might realize.
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Psychologically speaking, children tend to be more suggestible as well. Their imaginations are well developed while their capacity for reason is less developed. A lot of "imaginary friends" are rooted in something the child has been exposed to (movies, television, stories, fairytales, etc.) They are capable of creating an entire world from a line in a book, but lack the reasoning ability to totally separate that world from reality. They are also far more likely to pick up on cues from the people around them than we might realize.
I think this is an excellent point. Children are highly impressionable and like to please. I often wonder how much a child sees and experiences, paranormally speaking, is from adult suggestion—even if that suggestion isn't intentional or intended. I'm not saying its always the case, but it's something to consider.
I write books. I take pictures.
I sometimes try to tap into my Jedi powers.
~Michelle Pillow Author Website~
The Raven Books
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Very good points Laura and Michelle. I think that in many cases, the imaginations of children come into play.
But, I've also read cases of children providing facts and details so specific that they haven't been exposed to according to their parents, etc. It really makes me wonder.
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Very good points Laura and Michelle. I think that in many cases, the imaginations of children come into play.
But, I've also read cases of children providing facts and details so specific that they haven't been exposed to according to their parents, etc. It really makes me wonder.
Where I wonder about children is in the past life recollection. Carol Bowman (visit our paranormal investigators page for more information) has done some interesting work in this area. On her forum at http://www.childpastlives.org, there are parents who talk about their very young children (2 & 3 years old) starting to talk about being firefighters, watching people jump from buildings, bad men flying planes into buildings, etc. It is very interesting and compelling reading.
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there are parents who talk about their very young children (2 & 3 years old) starting to talk about being firefighters, watching people jump from buildings, bad men flying planes into buildings, etc.
Our media is still inundated with images from 9/11. It has been ingrained into our culture. I'm not saying that there is no reincarnation, I'm just saying that the mind is like a magnet, it picks up information along the way and we often don't even know where we got the information. It just seems like it came out of nowhere. But it didn't. I have this capacity for knowing the dumbest stuff, stuff no one cares about, stuff no one thinks about. But it came from information picked up through daily living; from a commercial, from a moment while channel surfing, from passing a billboard. Children are just as suseptible to this. There are so many images and so much information disseminated in so many ways that it would be odd for a child NOT to have picked up on 9/11 without really understanding it and without a parent being aware of the exposure to such information.
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Our media is still inundated with images from 9/11. It has been ingrained into our culture. I'm not saying that there is no reincarnation, I'm just saying that the mind is like a magnet, it picks up information along the way and we often don't even know where we got the information. It just seems like it came out of nowhere. But it didn't. I have this capacity for knowing the dumbest stuff, stuff no one cares about, stuff no one thinks about. But it came from information picked up through daily living; from a commercial, from a moment while channel surfing, from passing a billboard. Children are just as suseptible to this. There are so many images and so much information disseminated in so many ways that it would be odd for a child NOT to have picked up on 9/11 without really understanding it and without a parent being aware of the exposure to such information.
That's as good of an explanation as any. I agree with both you and Dawkins. Kids make stuff up, and kids know stuff that is surprising they know. I'm a mom – so I've experienced both phenomena.
I was trying to explain this to our 11 year old yesterday – about anecdotal evidence vs. information obtained from scientific studies. But then, faith always comes into play. The Bible is stories – anecdotal evidence handed down, and yet people believe it absolutely. They take it quite literally. And so, when they talk to someone who actually had an experience and believes that experience – do they then take that on faith as they do religion? We have a propensity to take much on faith, and depending on the source, we can believe very strongly in stories that we have been told.
Add to this developmental stuff – kids in certain developmental stages, have difficulty distinguishing reality from fiction – things they see on TV, in movies, etc. Kids between the ages of three and five begin to develop this capacity (to distinguish fact from fiction) – but heck, the late bloomers make it to five before they can do this. Then toss in how impressionable kids are…
This doesn't mean that kids aren't having paranormal experiences, just – how can you know if they are or not??? Even as they become adults, you can't go back and say "remember when this happened? Well what was really going on?", because the mind doesn't preserve memory as a series of snapshots or a film that can be rewound and viewed again and again. Instead, it parses memories up into pieces and stores them in different places. Then the memory has to be fully reconstructed whenever you attempt to recall it. And since we want to remember things the way we choose to remember them, this is exactly what we do for the most part. We put the memory back together in such a way that it confirms what we want to remember, rather than what we actually remember.
So there I go – arguing both sides of the fence again. It would be just easier if I could either fully believe or fully disbelieve. Seriously.
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Here's a random thought…
Has anyone done any research into the connection between "innocents seeing ghosts" and brain development? Like the undeveloped prefrontal cortex (which controls the brain’s more advanced functions/cognition -- prioritize thoughts, imagine, think in the abstract, anticipate consequences, plan, control impulses). Kids are always being described as more open and prone to using more emotional parts of the brain.
I would contend that the stage of development could be impacting these reports in other ways. Children have not learned basic critical thinking skills and are more prone to believing or thinking that something they are seeing is of a supernatural origin. This is exacerbated by cartoons, television shows, and children's fairy tales….In other words, they are surrounded by mythology, and so are much more likely to turn to that as an explanation.
I think it was Michael Shermer who advised that before we go thinking it's out there, we must first examine if it's not up here. Taps temple.
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So there I go – arguing both sides of the fence again. It would be just easier if I could either fully believe or fully disbelieve. Seriously.
I'm with you on this one. I argue myself back and forth all the time. LOL
I write books. I take pictures.
I sometimes try to tap into my Jedi powers.
~Michelle Pillow Author Website~
The Raven Books
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I would contend that the stage of development could be impacting these reports in other ways. Children have not learned basic critical thinking skills and are more prone to believing or thinking that something they are seeing is of a supernatural origin. This is exacerbated by cartoons, television shows, and children's fairy tales….In other words, they are surrounded by mythology, and so are much more likely to turn to that as an explanation.
I don't think it's just kids. (well the brain development thing, sure--hopefully you kwim) I know I have an active imagination--kinda have to with my job. That's why I never credit any of those "not alone" feelings I get as being something paranormal. I can never tell if something's really standing there, or if I imagine it. So, I err on the side of me imagining it. And it's not like it happens all the time or anything.
I write books. I take pictures.
I sometimes try to tap into my Jedi powers.
~Michelle Pillow Author Website~
The Raven Books
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the mind doesn't preserve memory as a series of snapshots or a film that can be rewound and viewed again and again.
That's how eidetic memory works, simply speaking.
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I had a strange experience with my daughter once. She was about two and I was reading her a book in preparation to going to bed. I was lying on my left side and she was facing me. All of a sudden, she started to pop up and down and giggle like she was playing peekaboo with someone behind me. I didn't see or feel anyone behind me. Then she stretched out her hand like she was touching someone/thing. It must have disappeared and then she went back to listening to the story. She was clearly reacting to something I couldn't see.
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I had a strange experience with my daughter once. She was about two and I was reading her a book in preparation to going to bed. I was lying on my left side and she was facing me. All of a sudden, she started to pop up and down and giggle like she was playing peekaboo with someone behind me. I didn't see or feel anyone behind me. Then she stretched out her hand like she was touching someone/thing. It must have disappeared and then she went back to listening to the story. She was clearly reacting to something I couldn't see.
This is one great example of why I believe children can see spirits until they reach a certain age. They are just more open to it because they haven't been told "it's silly" or "no, that didn't happen" or "you are imagining it, that's not real."
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This is one great example of why I believe children can see spirits until they reach a certain age. They are just more open to it because they haven't been told "it's silly" or "no, that didn't happen" or "you are imagining it, that's not real."
I agree, I think that children are reacting to their "soul memories", which fade as they get older. If the memories didn't our minds couldn't handle it. (in regards to reincarnation)
As to them seeing spirits more often than adults, I think it's for a lot of the reasons stated above, such as: their minds are un-formed as of yet, no critical thinking skills. they see what they see.
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As to them seeing spirits more often than adults, I think it's for a lot of the reasons stated above, such as: their minds are un-formed as of yet, no critical thinking skills. they see what they see.
Wow! This struck me as quite profound – I, critical thinking girl, had not thought of that. Kids see what they see. They don't filter it.
I'm going to have to think about that one for a bit.
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The notion that kids see things not of this world more than adults, because they haven't developed critical thinking skills sort of works both ways, doesn't it? The same notion can both be used to logically prove or disprove that children are seeing something that is there or seeing something completely made up from their mind.
I remember as a child my mother said that I hallucinated all the time. As a matter of fact I had been take to the doctor a few times (not a pyschologist, just an MD). For the most part I remember them. I can say with certainty that some were my imagination, however, others I'm not so sure of. The only thing that I can prove to myself in that particular situation is that even being very young (3 and 4) I could at least discern some of what wasn't real. The problem is that I believed some of it to be real. So if a young child can at least be under the assumption that they can tell what is real and what is not already starts to prove that a child that young is infact aware of fanciful creations and reality.
These things can also be applied not just to an individual's age, but also a civilization. Older, less "modern" civilizations also seem to believe in the supernatural and "sees" things more than a more "modern" person. The reasoning is that because of ignorance of science, events and the reasons behind them are personified to explain these things away. Obviously this is the correct answer in many cases, but there are supernatural things that people even now in this civilization experience that can't exactly be explained through current science. The assumption there is that we simply do not understand what is going on, which seems to be true to an extent.
Remember, the mind matricing images from the abstract to impress faces on things, objects moving being explained by physics of some degree, disembodied voices being contrived as flights of fancy and coincidence – even en-masse of others, a memory or dream being projected into your "awake" reality can only explain things so far. The problem is that if you can't reproduce these with the same conditions in a reasonable manner, then there is no control and no proof and the supposed science becomes what science has regarded the paranormal scientists as being: baseless and only seeing what they want to see.
I know I've strayed (once again) off-topic. Sorry about that!
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The notion that kids see things not of this world more than adults, because they haven't developed critical thinking skills sort of works both ways, doesn't it? The same notion can both be used to logically prove or disprove that children are seeing something that is there or seeing something completely made up from their mind.
I remember as a child my mother said that I hallucinated all the time. As a matter of fact I had been take to the doctor a few times (not a pyschologist, just an MD). For the most part I remember them. I can say with certainty that some were my imagination, however, others I'm not so sure of. The only thing that I can prove to myself in that particular situation is that even being very young (3 and 4) I could at least discern some of what wasn't real. The problem is that I believed some of it to be real. So if a young child can at least be under the assumption that they can tell what is real and what is not already starts to prove that a child that young is infact aware of fanciful creations and reality.
These things can also be applied not just to an individual's age, but also a civilization. Older, less "modern" civilizations also seem to believe in the supernatural and "sees" things more than a more "modern" person. The reasoning is that because of ignorance of science, events and the reasons behind them are personified to explain these things away. Obviously this is the correct answer in many cases, but there are supernatural things that people even now in this civilization experience that can't exactly be explained through current science. The assumption there is that we simply do not understand what is going on, which seems to be true to an extent.
Remember, the mind matricing images from the abstract to impress faces on things, objects moving being explained by physics of some degree, disembodied voices being contrived as flights of fancy and coincidence – even en-masse of others, a memory or dream being projected into your "awake" reality can only explain things so far. The problem is that if you can't reproduce these with the same conditions in a reasonable manner, then there is no control and no proof and the supposed science becomes what science has regarded the paranormal scientists as being: baseless and only seeing what they want to see.
I know I've strayed (once again) off-topic. Sorry about that!
You hardly strayed at all – and made some great points in the process.
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I was the same way as a child to a degree. I remember my first paranormal experience when I was about six or so years old. Till recently I hardly counted it as an experience since I was a little child at a time and couldn't rule out my imagination. It wasn't till my recent roadtrip with one of my sisters that we got to talking about experiences and came to find out she had seen the same thing also that I did. She is older than me by over 5 years. So I'm left wondering about how to account for what we saw. Do I still consider it a case of imagination for the both of us or do I count it as a paranormal experience witnessed by two different people at different times?
I'm experiencing first hand the wild imaginations of kids. My two boys keep me informed of all the things they dream up. Some of them are so off the wall that I know it's their imagination. But some stuff I hear from them let me know that their minds are very keen. They haven't told me of anything scary like ghosts or monsters yet.
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