Los Niños expuestos a la religión tienen dificultades para distinguir la Realidad de la Ficción (Investigación)

Estudio encuentra que los Niños expuestos a la religión tienen dificultades para distinguir la Realidad de la Ficción.

The Huffington Post | Por Shadee Ashtari

Publicado: 21.07.2014 16:56 EDT

Los niños pequeños que están expuestos a la religión tienen dificultades para diferenciar entre la realidad y la ficción, según un nuevo estudio publicado en la edición de julio de “Cognitive Science”.

Los investigadores presentaron niños de 5 - 6 años de edad de las escuelas públicas y parroquiales con tres diferentes tipos de historias - religiosos, fantásticos y realistas - en un esfuerzo para medir qué tan bien podían identificar narrativas con elementos imposibles y ficticios.

El estudio encontró que, de los 66 participantes, los niños que iban a la iglesia o se inscribieron en una escuela parroquial fueron significativamente menos capaces que los niños seculares para identificar elementos sobrenaturales, como animales que hablan, como ficticios.

Al relacionar los aparentemente imposibles eventos religiosos realizados a través de la intervención divina (por ejemplo, Jesús transformando el agua en vino) con los relatos de ficción, los niños religiosos confiarían más decididamente en la religión para justificar sus falsas categorizaciones.

"En ambos estudios, [los niños expuestos a la religión] eran menos propensos a considerar a los personajes de las historias fantásticas como falsos, y en línea con esta ambigüedad, ellos lo relacionaron más con la realidad y recurrieron menos a la imposibilidad que los hijos de seculares", concluyó el estudio.

Refutando anteriores hipótesis que afirman que los niños "nacen creyentes", los autores sugieren que "la enseñanza religiosa, especialmente la exposición a historias de milagros, lleva a los niños a una receptividad más genérica hacia lo imposible, es decir, una mayor posibilidad de aceptar que lo imposible puede suceder como una causa común y ordinaria”

Según 2013-2014 datos de Gallup , aproximadamente 83 por ciento de los estadounidenses se adhieren a una afiliación religiosa, y un grupo aún mayor - 86 por ciento - creen en Dios.

Más de un cuarto de los estadounidenses, el 28 por ciento, también creen que la Biblia es la palabra real de Dios y debe ser tomada literalmente, mientras que otro 47 por ciento dice que la Biblia es palabra inspirada de Dios.

Traducido del:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/children-religion-fact-fiction_n_5607009.html

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Los niños expuestos a la religión tienen dificultades para distinguir la realidad de la ficción (Investigación)

Por Scott Kaufman

Viernes, 18 de julio 2014 12:28 EDT

Un estudio publicado en la edición de julio de “Cognitive Science” (Ciencia Cognitiva) determinó que los niños que no están expuestos a las historias religiosas son más capaces de decir que los personajes de estas "historias fantásticas" son ficticios; mientras que los niños criados en un ambiente religioso, incluso "enfocan éstas historias fantásticas con flexibilidad"

En "Los juicios sobre realidad y ficción de los niños de entornos religiosos y no religiosos," de Kathleen Corriveau, Eva Chen, y Paul Harris, demuestran que los niños suelen tener una "sensibilidad a los elementos inverosímiles o mágicos en una narración", y pueden determinar si los caracteres en el relato son reales o de ficción, tomando por referencias elementos fantásticos en la narración, como "velas invisibles" o "una espada que le protege del peligro todo el tiempo."

Sin embargo, los niños criados en hogares en los que se encuentran con frecuencia relatos religiosos no tratan esos relatos con el mismo escepticismo.

Los autores creen que estos niños que "piensan en ello como algo similar a los cuentos de hadas", juzgando “los hechos descritos como inverosímiles o mágicos y llegan a la conclusión de que los protagonistas de estos relatos sólo son falsos"

Y, sin embargo, "esta predicción es probable que esté mal", porque "con el testimonio apropiado de los adultos" en hogares religiosos, los niños "concebirán al protagonista en las narraciones como una persona real, incluso si la narración incluye sucesos imposibles".

Los investigadores tomaron a 66 niños entre las edades de cinco y seis años y les hicieron preguntas sobre las historias; algunas de las cuales fueron extraídas de cuentos de hadas, otras del Antiguo Testamento... a fin de determinar si los niños creen que los personajes en ellas eran reales o de ficción .

"Los niños con exposición a la religión (a través de asistencia a la iglesia, la escuela parroquial, o ambos) juzgaron a los personajes de las historias religiosas como reales", escribieron los autores. "Por el contrario, los niños que no tienen dicha exposición juzgaron que eran ficticios", tal como lo habían hecho con los personajes de cuentos de hadas. Pero los niños con exposición a la religión juzgaron a muchos personajes fantásticos, pero no explícitamente en las historias religiosas, que también consideraban reales: Es el equivalente de ser incapaz de diferenciar entre el personaje de Tom Sawyer de Mark Twain y el personaje real de George Washington.

Esta conclusión contradice estudios anteriores en los que se decía que los niños "Nacían creyentes", es decir que poseían "una credulidad natural hacia los seres extraordinarios con poderes sobrehumanos. De hecho, los niños seculares respondieron a las historias religiosas, de la misma manera como responderían a historias fantásticas: juzgaban al protagonista como ficticio"

Los investigadores también determinaron que "la enseñanza religiosa, especialmente la exposición a las historias de milagros, lleva a los niños a una receptividad más genérica hacia lo imposible, es decir, una más amplia aceptación de que lo imposible puede suceder en contraparte a las relaciones causales ordinarias."

Traducido del:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/18/children-exposed-to-religion-have-difficulty-distinguishing-fact-from-fiction/

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New Study Shows That Children Exposed to Religion Have a Hard Time Distinguishing Fact from Fiction

July 18, 2014 By Hemant Mehta

Five- and six-year-old children know that George Washington was a real person and Snow White is fictional.

But what if you told them this story?

God warned Noah about a flood that was going to cover the Earth. Noah and his wife built a giant boat and gathered two of every kind of animal before the flood came. They were very worried but Noah, his family, and all the animals drifted for days until they reached new land.

Real or pretend?

A new study published in the journal Cognitive Science explored that very question. Without going into too much detail, researchers gathered 5- and 6-year-olds and divided them up into four groups:

Kids who attend public school and go to church

Kids who attend public school and don’t go to church

Kids who attend parochial school and go to church

Kids who attend parochial school and don’t go to church

Then they read them a series of biblical stories that are familiar to all of us (like the stories of Noah or Moses or Joseph)… but they modified them. In some cases, they just read the religious stories straight up (“Religious”). In some cases, they removed the God element and replaced it with Magic (“Fantastical”). In some cases, they removed the supernatural elements altogether (“Realistic”).

Different stories were read to different kids.

Now, here’s what *should* have happened:

When the kids heard the realistic stories, they should have said the character seemed real. Turns out they all did that!

When the kids heard the fantastical stories, they should have said the character seemed pretend. The kids were all over the place here… but they generally did that.

When the kids heard the religious stories, they should have said the character was pretend. Let’s see how that went:

In that picture, on the vertical axis, 0 means pretend and 1 means real. So, when it comes to the realistic stories, all the bars are pretty close to 1.

But look at that middle chunk representing the religious stories. Only one group, the bar on the left, correctly said those stories were pretend: The non-church-going kids who attended public school.

Even with the fantastical stories, that same group was most likely to say they were pretend.

The researchers say these results throw that whole theory that children are “born believers” right out the window:

Our central question concerned children’s judgments about the status of story characters in religious stories. Children with exposure to religion — via church attendance, parochial schooling, or both — judged such characters to be real. By contrast, children with no such exposure judged them to be pretend. This sharp discrepancy between children with and without exposure to religion lends no support to the hypothesis that children are “born believers”… with a natural credulity toward extraordinary beings with superhuman powers. Indeed, secular children responded to religious stories in much the same way as they responded to fantastical stories — they judged the protagonist to be pretend.

…

The same researchers also did another experiment. This time, they went to the extremes. They took public school kids who didn’t go to church and parochial school kids who did go to church.

They read the kids different kinds of stories, all based on a classic Bible tale. For example, here’s a simplified version of how they used the Moses story:

Familiar/Magical: John waved his magic stick and parted the red sea.

Familiar/non-Magical: John waved his stick and parted the red sea.

Unfamiliar/Magical: John waved his magic stick and parted the mountain.

Unfamiliar/non-Magical: John waved his stick and parted the mountain.

Once again, the kids were supposed to separate whichever story they heard into “real” or “pretend.” (In this case, all of the stories were “pretend” because you can’t part a sea or mountain.)

How did they do? Keep in mind that 0 means pretend and 1 means real, so they should have had lower numbers down the line…

Whoa. In every single instance, the secular group had lower scores than the religious group (meaning they were more correct).

What’s up with these results, researchers?

… in both studies, secular children systematically categorized the characters embedded in fantastical stories as pretend, and most of their justifications referred to the impossibility of a central event in the story. Effectively, secular children responded to these stories just as they might respond to a fairy story — they inferred that the central characters were fictional because they were involved in an event that is ordinarily impossible in reality. The pattern of responding for children exposed to religion was different. In both studies, they [children exposed to religion] were less likely to judge the characters in the fantastical stories as pretend, and in line with this equivocation, they made more appeals to reality and fewer appeals to impossibility than did secular children.

In short, kids exposed to religion believed the stories with magical/supernatural aspects to it because they didn’t think those things were impossible.

Religion blurs the lines between fact and fiction. You only hope kids exposed to it figure it out soon enough.

Unfortunately, not all of them do. We know there are adults who never learn the difference between fact and fiction. We call them Creationists. (And some of them even get elected to public office!)

It’s just more evidence for those who believe religious indoctrination is a form of mental child abuse.

By the way, there are a couple methodological concerns with the study (freely admitted by the researchers). First, they took the kids at their word about whether or not they attended church.

Second, it’s possible that other factors — not simply exposure to religion — caused the difference in perception between fact and fiction. The researchers believe, however, that neither of those concerns played a significant role in their study.

Source:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/07/18/new-study-shows-that-children-exposed-to-religion-have-a-hard-time-distinguishing-fact-from-fiction/

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PARA ACCEDER A LA INVESTIGACIÓN ORIGINAL

DEL "COGNITIVE SCIENCE"

(Click en la imágen)

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cogs.12138/abstract

Abstract

In two studies, 5- and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist embedded in three different types of stories. In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person. In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine intervention, claims about the status of the protagonist varied sharply with exposure to religion. Children who went to church or were enrolled in a parochial school, or both, judged the protagonist in religious stories to be a real person, whereas secular children with no such exposure to religion judged the protagonist in religious stories to be fictional. Children's upbringing was also related to their judgment about the protagonist in fantastical stories that included ordinarily impossible events whether brought about by magic (Study 1) or without reference to magic (Study 2). Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional. The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories.