Comment by wvbdmp

I think this video, and most such experiments involving children, suffer from a central issue: children are extremely sensitive to what they think adults want to hear. The kid watched the woman manipulate the things. He probably figured it would be rude not to acknowledge her changes. They should figure out a way to have another kid as the experimenter and disguise the obvious test/interview situation somehow. Especially the cracker thing feels sooo odd. I can’t believe he would let a peer get away with it, but who’s he to argue with an adult, much less a stranger?

Also children are brought up with super obvious problems like “what object fits into which hole?”. I feel like some of these tests measure less the child’s understanding of the given problem per se and more whether they have previously been introduced to trick questions/illusions.

And even controlling for all that, you’re totally right. Even adults get confused by mass, weight, volume, apparent size etc. sometimes. The kid doesn’t even intellectually know those concepts. His only input here is by sight, but his answer may be different if he got to hold both objects and feel their weight.