P180

Peggy Study, Panel P180 Themes: Language Development, Object Exploration, Social Interaction Source: (Lawler); date: tbd Title: Bringing Kate onstage, Problem Solving Text commentary: These clips show ??; Why important ?? P180A With baby Kate, 22mb P180B1 Beam Balance, 20mb P180B2 Beam Balance, 16mb P180C1 Colored Blocks, 22mb P180C2 Colored Blocks, 11mb P180D Cuisenaire Rods, 26mb …

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P177

Peggy Study, Panel P177 Themes: Language Development, Object Exploration, Social Interaction Source: (Lawler); date: mid-Q14 Title: The BEACH Microworld, Standard Objects and Cuisenaire Rods, Introducing baby Katy Text commentary: These clips show Peggy’s comfortable use of the Beach microworld, at about 16-17 months of age. The computer used here, a TI-99 PC, was the MIT …

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P174

Peggy Study, Panel P174 Themes: Language Development, Object Exploration, Social Interaction: Computer Use Source: (Lawler); date: tbd Title: Text commentary: The computer used here, a TI-99 PC, was the MIT Logo Project development machine; when the Lab shipped TI-Logo to Texas Instruments, Seymour Papert released the machine for use in my developmental study of Peggy …

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P184

P184, Peggy at 3 and a half years (video): clay conservations; Legos; TI-Logo ABC program; the girl & the cow; letter words; standard objects.

3V1288.1

3V1288.01 Pathetique Sonata: Peggy’s valuation (8/2/81) I began to play the adagio cantabile from Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. I was amazed and delighted at Peggy’s spontaneous comment that the song was very beautiful.

3V1286.1

3V1286.01 Singing: a mnemonic method for Peggy; her catalog (1/31/81) This is a very important method of recalling, perhaps even thinking, for Peggy. Let’s try to list her songs: The FOX – her oldest favorite; well known lines and jungles The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly (Burl Ives movie sound track) New York, New …

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3V1284.1

3V1284.01 “Supposed to” (7/31/81) This phrase seems to carry a lot of meaning for Peggy — almost a weight equivalent to natural law. I can now no longer recall the particular application Peggy made of this phrase. note written 8/30/81

3V1277.1

3V1277.01 First nearly complete Alphabet song (7/22/81) Peggy is much interested in the alphabet. Recently she sat on the couch reading Richard Scary’s book, saying what the letter picture correspondences implied, “A is for Apple,” etc. Getting stuck once or twice she asked me to tell her what was intended by the picture (eg. Q …

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3V1275.1

3V1275.01 Computer “rods” (7/20/81) Seeing the trouble she had with the rods always falling over, I asked is a Rods microworld would be easier to manipulate and thus intellectually more accessible to her. So I proceeded to make one, substituting (a later idea) the blinking of numbers in place of partial blanks — that is …

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3V1271.1

3V1271.01 Singing: [Come down the stairs…I never did intend to marry a soldier] Peggy started down the stairs and sang, “Come down the stairs, Pretty Peggy-O….I never did intend to marry a soldier…”

3V1270.1

3V1270.01 Alphabets: the litany and “A is for Apple…” (7/15/81) Today Peggy was singing, chanting material about the alphabet. She has “ABCD” pretty well, but later on always goes “L-O-M-O-P” The similarity of M and N appears to confuse her. She also repeated several times, “A is for Apple, B is for Ball…”

3V1267.1

3V1267.01 Computer-based cuisenaire rods (7/12/81) Peggy enjoyed playing with the Cuisenaire rods during out experiment P181. Either in that one or the next P182, Peggy first accomplished a set of “stairs.” After the end of the experiment, she continued playing with rods and I heard her mention (at a point where she omitted the 3-length …

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3V1266.1

3V1266.01 Implicit Instruction: speech generated alphabet (7/11/81) Peggy asked to play with the speech generator. I set it up and keyed in the alphabet — for no particular reasons other than to test it’s functioning — then realized that this extended symbolic object, of marginally greater interest to me than random letters, was now an …

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3V1265.1

3V1265.01 Fireman’s Bazaar: a broken heart for Daddy (7/10/81) This evening the three children and I went to the fair. Robby and Miriam disappeared instantly and left me with Peggy. We watched some square dancers then sauntered over in the direction of the merry go round. Peggy’s eyes lit up and she asked if we …

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3V1264.1

3V1264.01 TI Speech Editor (7/9/81) This limited function module appears to do no more that recite letter names. That, however, is now very interesting to Peggy. After watching Miriam and me play with it for a while, she asked to take over. It appears that any combination of letters not separated by a space or …

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3V1252.1

3V1252.01 Pure Conditionals (6/27/81) Last observation was not accurate or complete. This becomes clear from a very surprising thing Peggy said as she and I had breakfast this morning (actually, I believe she finished first, then returned to the table): “Dad, if I want some orange juice?” I looked at her and asked, “What was …

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3V1247.2

3V1247.02 Past tense and conditionals (6/22/81) For the past month or so, Peggy has been forming past tenses in the typical non-standard way — ie. RUN, RUNNED. (I will have to see if I can get her to discuss this in the next session, P181 now) — to get at the question raised by Seigler …

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3V1247.1

3V1247.01 Computer as Word-tester (6/22/81) Peggy sorts through the cards of the BEACH WORLD – She read the card WORLD with a questioning tone in her voice, then adding “I’ll try it and see,” executed it with considerable satisfaction. Later, after creating some objects, she sorted through the cards and picked out DOWN. She acted …

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3V1246.1

3V1246.01 Edit Shape 16: Miriam makes a pony shape for Peggy (6/21/81) Miriam made a PONY shape and procedure for Peggy’s BEACH WORLD. After I saved these on a tape and Miriam went away, Peggy took over her computer again, In the interim, somehow the shape had been cleared (perhaps a crash). At any rate, …

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3V1239.1

3V1239.01 Discovering “Turn” (6/14/81) After what seemed initially an unproductive session (P177), Peggy discovered the word TURN. Looking through the RED lettered cards (probably for some other word) she selected and keyed it. The TRUCK (or VAN) which was the current objects reversed as directed and Peggy exclaimed, “It turned !” This does not argue …

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3V1238.2

3V1238.02 Recalling a Word (6/13/81) Peggy just spelled ZOOM from memory. Two girl shapes were ZOOMing too close together. The FAST card sat nearby so I instructed Peggy to key it. With some trouble, she keyed that familiar word of unknown spelling, copying letter by letter. Disappointed that the current girl was going slow (fast …

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3V1238.1

3V1238.01 Debugging Spellings (6/13/81) Peggy copies the cards letter by letter, but sometimes she copies wrong. For example, after we returned from the hospital with Kate and Gretchen, and I loaded procedures, Peggy executed WORLD, SUN, UP (many times) then PAINT GREEN; she then tried “VAN”, a familiar shape but a less familiar word; because …

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3V1234.3

3V1234.03 Reading: one word at a time (6/9/81) Peggy played with the computer — off and on — during most of the day. Mostly she was “on.” (She even left the supper table to play with her “world”) although she took a break now and again to have a snack or to join Robby and …

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3V1234.2

3V1234.02 Peggy’s Reception of Card-words (6/9/81) After setting up the world subsystem with last minute perfections, I went off to the dentist, leaving four sets of cards stacked separately near the computer with the WORLD word leaning against the front of it. I left with the WORLD display set up, with a HOUSE in place …

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3V1234.1

3V1234.01 A New Way of Presenting Words (6/9/81) Peggy’s biggest problem in typing words [from a list] was recognizing which word she was copying to the keyboard. I began telling her to look at the first letter of the word and to remember what it was, emphasizing it that way and by identifying it by …

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3V1233.1

3V1233.01 Peggy’s first Word World: a summary description (6/8/81) Objects: SUN (base color) (via UPx N) (help with WALK/SLOWERx2) GIRL (base color) (Via DOWN x N=4 (started at road) CAR (help with GREEN) (help with MOVE) (via DOWN x 5) (help with WALK/ FAST) DOG (base color) (help with MOVE) (via DOWN x 1) HOUSE …

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3V1230.2

3V1230.02 Writing What ? (6/5/81) Peggy drew a heart on her chalkboard. With Kate’s birth due at any day, her sister’s are much on Peggy’s mind. She drew her favorite shape, a heart, and drew some wiggly lines inside. she asked, “Dad, does that say ‘babies and sisters’?”

3V1230.1

3V1230.01 Xylopipes and letters (6/5/81) The Xylopipes were set up on the piano bench — an inconvenient place but a flat surface of approximately the right size. Ages ago, I had put letter labels on the pipes as I did also on the piano keys. Today Peggy banged on the pipes with no apparent recognition …

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3V1223.2

3V1223.02 Duets (5/29/81) Peggy has begun to ask me to help her sing, even ‘The Fox went out on a chilly night.” What typically happens is that I sing a little, she sings a lot and when she is stymied, I sing a little more. This scenario seems to derive from two sources; one may …

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3V1218.1

3V1218.01 Spelling a second word: “loadshapes” after “load” (5/24/81) My cassette files are set up with procedures stored before shapes. The first are accessed by ‘LOAD’ and the second by ‘LOADSHAPES.’ Since Peggy had insisted on typing LOAD wherever possible, I have HAD to instruct her to discriminate between the two words so that her …

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3V1217.2

3V1217.02 Spelling “load” and being grown-up; contrast toilet training (5/23/81) Peggy sat alone at the computer. The rest of us were out in the dining room, eating lunch. She called with notable excitement, “Daddy, come see. I’ve spelled ‘LOAD.’ Come see it, Daddy.” Because of her excitement, I left the table, witnessed her achievement (it …

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3V1217.1

3V1217.01 The Alphabet Song: letters change but the melody lingers on (5/23/81) Coming home from Cambridge, Miriam was singing the litany ‘ABCD-EFG…” and getting Peggy to join her. At home, singing by herself, Peggy gave evidence of knowing the tune well but her text was somewhat corrupt: “ABCD-FIG…” was how she began then petered off. …

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3V1215.1

3V1215.01 Peggy in Cambridge for Greg’s Farewell party (5/21/81) Peggy came with us. The whole family on a trek to Cambridge for a farewell party at Greg’s leaving Logo. Everybody “hung around” Logo while I tried to complete my Tictactoe paper for Cognitive Science. I don’t recall much of what Peggy did then.. -> for …

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3V1212.1

3V121201 Writing words: in order to load programs (very impt.) (5/18/81) Peggy has spontaneously begun to “write” (ie type) words in order to control the loading of programs. While waiting for Gretchen to make available the DRAW program, Peggy typed “LO” (Did she ask if that was right ? Did she ask what next ?) …

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3V1204.1

3V1204.01 Note for Bob: A bug or is it a feature ? (5/10/81) Peggy has been able to get DRAW to malfunction, in such a way that a red truck appears in mid screen. This was a nice novelty. We left it there and she drew a box around it. It makes me wonder if …

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3V1199.3

3V1199.03 P’s on the computer with drawing program 5/5/81) Peggy has begin playing with a tile-based drawing program I made for Miriam.. Although she says she prefers playing with the Blocks program, Peggy plays with the drawing program more than any other. She surprised herself and me today by making a box, then she continued …

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3V1199.2

3V1199.02 Two Drawings (with Polaroid sample) and “wwords” (5/5/81) Peggy made these figures (see photo in notebook) on her chalkboard as I watched (After the first was completed). She explained they were two hearts, the one at right having the message “I love Daddy,” the second “I love Mimi.” Peggy wrote the marks in the …

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3V1199.1

3V119901 Bizarre reason (5/5/81) Peggy often asks which shoe goes on which foot. Today I saw her putting her sandal on the correct foot and asked how she picked THAT foot. Peggy answered, “‘Cause it was the funny one.”

3V1192.2

3V119202 Unusual construction: “I won’t make sure I’ll slip.” (4/28/81) no further detail with this note.

3V1192.1

3V119201 Issues in learning graphical language: Logo logon messages (/28/81) Peggy has more or less read “BY” — the common word in her story books. Her reading it shows little discrimination but for length. Today, Peggy began reading (in my presence, for the first time) the Logo Logon messages “Setting up” and “Welcome to Logo.” …

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3V1191.2

3V119102 Cutting up a Tree: an old joke (4/27/81) Robby and I were hauling hickory back from the site where I recently felled a tree. When Peggy came to watch us, I introduced her to a joke, a simple absurdity of the language. She knows one cuts down a tree (she has seen this twice …

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3V1191.1

3V1191.01 Nightmare: looking for Miriam (4/27/81) Peggy woke up around midnight, sobbing loudly and crying for her sister. I tried comforting her a while. She responded, more or less to our questions, but was still asleep. Gretchen sat with her longer, than I did. The next day, I asked Peggy what was wrong the night …

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