Children are quick to ask "why" and "how'' when it comes to new things, but research suggests that they learn more when teachers turn the questions back on them. "When children explain events, they learn more than when just getting the results,'' said Cristine H. Legare, a professor at the University of Texas. Ms. Legare brought in 96 children aged 3 to 5 and set before them a complex toy made up of colorful, interlocking gears  . With the first group, the researchers asked, "Can you explain this to me?" With the second one, they said, "Look, isn't this interesting?'' The two groups of children focused on different things, researchers found. Children who were asked to observe noticed the colors of the toy, while those asked to explain focused on the chain of gears working on each other. Children who had explained the toy were better at re-creating it and not being disturbed by decorative gears, and they were better able to use what they had learned who had observed the toy outperformed the children in the explanation group on a memory task focused on the toy's colors. Dedre Gentner, the director of the cognitive science program at Northwestern University, said that teachers introducing a concept can improve students' understanding  by  giving examples of close comparisons,  and then asking children to explain how concepts are related. In a series of experiments with 3-to 7-year-olds, she focus children can be con be confused by comparisons that focus on a relationship rather than a direct-object match. For example, a 3-year-old shown a picture of two rabbits facing each other and told "this is a toma '' and then asked to find another "tome" will choose a picture of a rabbit over one of two cats facing each other 98 percent of the time. A 7-year-old is more likely to recognize the more abstract comparison of a relationship. However, Ms. Gentner found that 3-year-olds can think more like 7-yesr-olds if they are given more examples. When shown a "toma" with rabbits and another with cats, and then asked, "Can you say why both of these are tomas?" most of the children can give a good explanation. As for the gear toy, the first group  _  .
learned more about its history focused on the design of the toy had a clear memory of its colors found it hard to create the toy again