I read a book called The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcom Gladwell. In one chapter, it talks about the power of "Stickiness", why some things catch on, and others do not. One example Gladwell gives is about a particular Sesame Street episode that was less than a hit with children. The following paragraph describes Episode 3683:
Big Bird welcomes the viewer and is greeted by a post woman with a package for him. She reveals her name is Emagene and that this is her first visit to the neighborhood. Big Bird wonders how she knew who he was and she claims it’s because his name and his likeness are one in the same. Big Bird then notes how Oscar, Snuffy and Celina all have regular names and not just descriptions. He then walks away upset, so Snuffy obeys the best friend conduct and goes to see what’s wrong. Snuffy tries to cheer Big Bird up by offering one of his names (“Aloysius” and “Snuffy”), but Big Bird declines. He then suggests Big Bird get a new name, which he thinks is a great idea! Snuffy then tries to stop calling him “Bird” as a nickname. Big Bird’s plan to get a new name is to have each of them ask everyone for names they like. When Snuffy leaves, Ruthie arrives. Big Bird asks her for some names, so she sings a fast-paced song, jam-packed with dozens of names. Big Bird then asks her to sing it again, but spelling the names so he can write them down. Ruthie promptly faints. Big Bird has finally settled on a name he likes: Roy. He asks Snuffy to join him in telling everyone his new name. Snuffy, however, still has a hard time replacing the name in his memory. Snuffy leaves Roy so he can practice some more remembering his name. As all of Roy’s friends pass by, they call him by his new name. But, being called “Roy” doesn’t make him feel happier. Snuffy comes back, having mastered calling him Roy. Roy begins to sob, missing his old name, even if it wasn’t like a regular name. Snuffy struggles adjusting to another new name. Snuffy’s got the hang of calling Big Bird by his regular name again. Miles passes by, surprised that Big Bird has changed his name again, but is happy that he’s changed his mind. He calls over Ruthie and Celina, who are relieved too. http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_3683This excerpt from "The Tipping Point", is a fantastic explanation of the Principle of Mutual Exclusivity as we discussed it in class. I think the book explained both the principle and its connection to popular culture brilliantly.
The show sounds like it should be a winner, right?
Wrong. The Roy show was tested by the Sesame Street research staff and the numbers were very disappointing. The first segment involving Snuffy and Big Bird did well. As you would expect, the viewers were curious. Then things began to fall apart. By the second of the street scenes, attention dropped to 80 percent. By the third, 78 percent. By the fourth 40 percent, then 50, then 20. Alter viewing the show, the kids were quizzed on what they had seen. "We asked very specific questions and were looking for clear answers," Rosemary Truglio, SesameStreet's research head said. "What was the show about? Sixty percent knew. What did Big Bird want to do? Fifty three percent knew. What was Big Bird's new name? Twenty percent knew. How did Big Bird feel at the end? Fifty percent knew." By comparison, another of the shows tested by Sesame Street at the very same time recorded 90 percent plus correct answers on the postshow quiz. The show simply wasn't making any impression. It wasn't sticking.
Why did the show fail? The problem, at root, is with the premise of the show the essential joke that Big Bird doesn't want to be known as a big bird. That's the kind of wordplay that a preschooler simply doesn't understand. Preschoolers make a number of assumptions about words and their meaning as they acquire language, one of the most important of which is what the psychologist Ellen Markman calls the principle of mutual exclusivity. Simply put, this means that small children have difficulty believing that any one object can have two different names. The natural assumption of children, Markman argues, is that if an object or person is given a second label, then that label must refer to some secondary property or attribute of that object. You can see how useful this assumption is to a child faced with the extraordinary task of assigning a word to everything in the world. A child who learns the word elephant knows, with absolute certainty, that it is something different from a dog. Each new word makes the child's knowledge or the world more precise. Without mutual exclusivity, by contrast, if a child thought that elephant could simply be another label for dog, then each new word would make the world seem more complicated. Mutual exclusivity also helps the child think clearly. "Suppose," Markman writes, "a child who already knows 'apple' and 'red' hears someone refer to an apple as 'round.' By mutual exclusivity, the child can eliminate the object (apple) and its color (red) as the meaning of 'round' and can try to analyze the object for some other property to label."
What this means, though, is that children are going to have trouble with objects that have two names, or objects that change names. A child has difficulty with, say, the idea that an oak is both an oak and a tree; he or she may well assume that in that case "tree" is a word for collection of oaks.
The idea, then, that Big Bird no longer wants to be called Big Bird but instead wants to be called Roy is almost guaranteed to befuddle a preschooler. How can someone with one name decide to have another name? Big Bird is saying that Big Bird is merely a descriptive name of the type of animal he is, and that he wants a particular name. He doesn't want to be a tree. He wants to be an oak. But three- and four-year-olds don't understand that a tree can also be an oak. To the extent that they understand what is going on at all, they probably think that Big Bird is trying to change into something else into some other kind of animal, or some other collection of animals. And how could he do that?
I feel like my mind just exploded into a thousand yellow feathers.
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