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P157A: Standard Objects, 33mb

P157A Clip Notes

Notes:7:18 by Analyst, 3/6/2014
Setting,Props Cedar Hall, Family Room: Standard Objects
Actors,Aims Peggy and Bob; GPL on camera.
Episode A:
0:04 to 0:56
Peggy: selects the ring towers from the set of standard toys
Bob: is this what you want to play with now?
Peggy: selects ring A equal 1.
Peggy: selects ring B equal 2.
Peggy: selects rings C equal 3.
Bob: offering Peggy ring 4.
Peggy: Oopsie. She removes rings C, placing it on the floor. She accepts ring D= 6 from Bob, then places that on the floor as well. (Un-interpreted vocalization.)
Peggy: selects ring E equal 5, placing it on the conical shaft. Oopsie. She removes it.
Peggy: selects ring F equal 4, placing it on the conical shaft, she tries to force it down. When she does not succeed, she says that’s hard. She removes it.
Peggy: selects ring C equal 3. She places it on the conical shaft, making happy noises.
Peggy: selects ring F equal 4, and slips it on the conical shaft.
Peggy: selects ring D equal 6, from the toy tray, starts to place it on the shaft, then changes her mind. Oopsie. She removes ring D, keeping it in her right hand. She selects ring E equal 5, with her left hand, slipping it on the conical shaft, then finishing the tower with ring D equal 6 from her right hand.
Peggy: Boing. Is that good, dad?
Bob: Yeah, pretty good. Couldn’t do it better myself!
Episode B:
0:57 to 1:58
Bob: we have all this other stuff here to play with. I don’t know what you want to play with. You pick it out.
Peggy: while Bob is talking, Peggy lifts the ring tower, inverting it. When the rings remain on the conical shaft, she shakes the object repeatedly.
Bob: do you need help with that?
Peggy: succeeds in prying them all; the ring scatter on the floor in front of her.
Bob: I guess not.
Peggy: smiling broadly, that’s when I (un-intelligible word; possibly “planed”). She immediately places ring A equal 1 on the shaft. Without stopping she reaches out for ring B equal 2 and puts it on the shaft directly.
Peggy: selecting C equal 3, she added that directly to the shaft. She exclaims (uncertain word).
Bob: do you pick out the next one by the colors or some other way?
Peggy: selecting D equal 4, she says: this is green; green says go.
Bob: green says go? (Peggy nods her head). What does blue say? Holding up the blue ring to her. Peggy: no response.
Bob: blue says beat it. (GPL chuckles.) He drops it on the floor near her.
Peggy: selecting E equal 5, no it doesn’t. She looks at the ring closely, she says: bye ring. She holds it up to show to Bob.
Bob: okay. I’ll buy that.
Peggy: placing ring five on the shaft. She reaches out selecting F equal six. Looking at Bob, bye Peggy ring
Bob: ha ha ha (realizing that she is making a joke). Do you think it really says that?
Peggy: nods her head vigorously. She has now perfectly place the rings on the shaft in order. She turns her attention to other objects in the toy tray.
Episode C:
1:59 to 3:05
Peggy: moving to the toy tray, I’m going to get out the cups….
Preliminary note: after expressing this intention, Peggy picked up larger cups and began building a set of nested cups directly; she picks first the appropriately fitting second cup and then got into a mode of selecting cups and trying to fit them in. What is most noteworthy in her procedure at this point is that she recognizes when the latest insertion is not correct; this is marked by her saying “Oopsie” or sometimes “Whoopsie.” This marks a point where she recognizes an imperfect step in the sequence and enters in effect a debugging mode and searches for the appropriately fitting cup to fill in the gap between the poor insertion and the ultimately correct one.

Bob: observing Peggy’s debugging procedures and her marking with “Whoopsie” a failure for process Bob asks “how do you know it’s the wrong one?”
Peggy: cause it’s supposed to go… Whoopsie. (This marks the failure of her intended repair and her need to continue searching for the correctly fitting cup and she proceeds to say “we’re missing one.”
Bob: are you sure?… Take a look at all of them (as he rotates the toy tray)
Peggy: Oopsie. I found one. (She locates the missing cup which has other objects inside; she dumps them out).
Bob: Oh, I guess you’re right. We were missing one. (Bob talks to Peggy, indicates that he would like her to sit in a different position so that she can be visible to the camera and her constructions can be visible to the camera as well.)
Peggy: Peggy continues a series of insertions, interrupting her procedure with exclamations of Whoopsie when her latest insertion does not fit tightly in the preceding containers. She then enters debugging mode, extracts the ill fitting cup, and searches for another.
Peggy: it’s the wrong one.
Bob: have you know it’s the wrong one?
Peggy: (no direct response to Bob’s question.) Whoopsie. This one and (inserting another cup) this one.
Bob: (speaking to GPL and for the record) I think it has to be because they don’t sink in as far…
GPL: (uncommitted murmur of agreement.) When it sinks all the way in it disappears.

Episode D:
3:06 to 4:05
Peggy: on completing her cup assembly, Peggy begins to insert blocks in the topmost concavity. When the top cup is filled, she begins to build a tower of blocks on the top of her stack of nested cups.
Peggy: I’m going to build a tower of these. (On top of one of the uniform blocks, she places it alphabet block and on top of that one of the tiny uniform blocks.) … There, daddy.
Bob: (he hands her the smallest nesting box equals 4, so oriented that the open face will be on the bottom if she places it on her tower.)
Peggy: rotating the block, it does not sink on the top of her constructed tower so she plunges into problem-solving because of instability. The result is that she removes part of her block tower on top of her containing cups and places nesting box 4 on top of her containing cups tower, concavity facing up, then replaces her blocks into the opening.
Bob: that’s good… Oops. What’s going on?
Peggy: (no reply to Bob’s question). Nonverbal exclamation: djew.
Bob: here, try this one. (He hands her box number one.)
Peggy: gonna fit! (Placing box 1 on the top of her tower, with the open face set to contain the tower) try.
(Box 1 fits on top of her cup tower)
Peggy: (box 1 goes into place an angle but does not fall) it does!
Bob: it’s amazing! (Offering her box 3) okay, fit this one.
Peggy: (taking the smaller box she tries to fit it on top of the larger box 1; this does not work as she knocks the larger box 1 onto the floor, and picks it up so she has one box in either hand)
Bob: guess that didn’t work too good. I gave you some bad advice, didn’t I?
Peggy: (wrestling with three boxes trying to empty out box 2 of its contents)
Bob: (switching out box 4, replacing it with box 1,) since you going to use those, have this.
Peggy: (still emptying box 2) Whoopsie.
Bob: (removing ring tower assembly from the scene of action)
Episode E:
4:06 to 4:50
Peggy: (sitting box 2 on the floor so that it’s openface is upward, Peggy inserts box 3 inside box 2, then withdraws it before letting go. She overturns box 2, so the openface is down; next, she places box 3 on top of box 2, saying: I gave you some bad advice.)
Comment: it appears that Peggy parrots Bob’s phrase from the preceding dialogue but applies it not to a person but to the objects she is manipulating.
Peggy: (continuing to build a tower of boxes; Peggy places box 4 on top of box 3) exclamation: Kyu.
Bob: you gave me bad advice? Is that right?
Peggy: (removing box 4 from the top of the tower, she also removes box 3 from the top of box 2, also reaching out with her right hand for box 1. Peggy places box 1 in the center of the collection: she adds box 2 on top of box 1; she places box 4 on top of box 2, but removes it immediately; with her other hand, she selects box 3 and places it on top of box 2; then places box 4 on top of box 3, explaining: I did it, daddy!
Bob: yes you did!
Peggy: no I didn’t (placing a uniform block on top of her tower of boxes)
Bob: you didn’t?
Peggy: (placing a small uniform block on top of her tower with that uniform block, then a tiny uniform block on top of the uniform block, she has now elaborated her tower of boxes, repeating the theme with different objects.)
Peggy: pauses, smiling she says: good
Episode F:
4:51 to 5:20
Bob: (directing Peggy’s attention to an alphabet block in the toy tray)
Peggy: (moving to the toy tray, she picks up the alphabet block, she says: I thought I missed that. She proceeds to perfect her elaborated tower by inserting the alphabet block underneath the uniform blocks.
Bob: I thought you missed it too.… (As Peggy tries and fails to insert the alphabet block on top of box 4, Bob says: that’s a problem; that one doesn’t fit very well.
Peggy: (she proceeds nonetheless to construct her tower of blocks on top of the tower of boxes, then draws back to examine her handiwork, delighted with success.) I did it, daddy!
Bob: You sure did! Pretty impressive.
Episode G:
5:21 to 7:14
Bob: you know what I’m going to do?… I’m going to make this disappear (as he pokes a small cylindrical stick inside the open window on the side of box 2)
Peggy: (looking around the side of her tower) Peggy selects a larger stick and tries to insert it through an open window of box 3; the stick pokes out the window on the far side, which she looks at.)
Bob: it’s come out the other side, hasn’t it?
Peggy: (knocking down a few blocks from the top of her tower) Whoopsie… Whoopsie. (Unclear word) gone away. … I’m trying a bigger one.
Bob: you’re right.… I’m sure it fits in there.….
Peggy: selecting the largest cylindrical stick: I get a bigger one; bigger one don’t fit. It sticks out of the other one. Oopsie.… Oopsie.
Bob: shall I put these away and play with some other toys?
Peggy: me (as she starts to take down her tower). I’ll better put them away.
Bob: okay.
Peggy: (as she puts objects back in the toy tray) I get you box.
Bob: I’m going to make that one disappear (as he places box 3 inverted over box 4)
Peggy: (placing box 2 inverted over box 3) make that one disappear. (She fails, and sets box 2 off to the side; she picks up box 1) make that disappear. (As she places box 1 over top of box 3).
Bob: but what about this (indicating box 2) this didn’t disappear?
Peggy: (stopping her effort she sets box 1 off to the side)
Bob: I’ll make this disappear that way (placing box 2 over top of box 3)
Peggy: and I’ll make them disappear (as she places box 1 over top of box 2).
Bob: okay, and the other little cigar (so we called our cylindrical sticks; Peggy moves it from the floor to the toy tray.).… Let’s put this away.
Themes,
Interplay
In episode B, Peggy’s response “this is green; green says go,” is entirely unresponsive to the sense of the question she was asked. This sort of verbal interplay without communication eventually needs a micro-theory as explanation.
A striking advance in her puzzle solution is the construction of an idiosyncratic marking of a step-failure, by “Oopsi” or “Whoopsie;” where earlier, this might have been seen as a transient remark, here it appears to be an integrated part of her procedure.

Panel P157, Order and Containment, Elements of Number, Minimal Word Reading, Figure Puzzle

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