1
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Tong Y, Danovitch JH, Wang F, Wang W. Children weigh internet inaccuracy when trusting in online information. J Exp Child Psychol 2025; 249:106105. [PMID: 39418812 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106105] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/20/2024] [Revised: 09/20/2024] [Accepted: 09/23/2024] [Indexed: 10/19/2024]
Abstract
This study examined whether an internet source's history of inaccuracy influences children's epistemic trust in online information. Chinese children aged 4 to 8 years (N = 84; 41 girls and 43 boys) accessed information on their own from an image-based website, heard information from the internet that was relayed by an adult, or viewed a person in a video providing information without referring to the internet (in a baseline condition). After the internet source provided three obviously inaccurate statements, children significantly reduced their epistemic trust in the internet source regardless of whether they obtained the information through a direct interaction with the internet or it was relayed by an adult. Moreover, the extent of the reduction in trust was comparable to the baseline video condition. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that 4- to 8-year-old children take into account a history of inaccuracy and revise their beliefs in statements from the internet, just as they do when evaluating human informants.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yu Tong
- Department of Psychology, Jianghan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430056, China; School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China.
| | - Judith H Danovitch
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA
| | - Fuxing Wang
- School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China
| | - Weijun Wang
- School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China
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2
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Keupp S, Herrmann E. Domain-specific inferences about conspecifics' skills by chimpanzees. Sci Rep 2024; 14:21996. [PMID: 39313494 PMCID: PMC11420200 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-73340-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/26/2024] [Accepted: 09/16/2024] [Indexed: 09/25/2024] Open
Abstract
Chimpanzees collaborate with conspecifics in their daily life. However, the cognitive processes underlying partner recruitment aren't fully understood. In the current study, chimpanzees needed to recruit a conspecific partner for either a cooperative or competitive experimental task. They spontaneously preferred to recruit cooperation partners who they have seen performing successfully before on a similar task, over partners who had failed. In contrast, the chimpanzees needed to experience the consequences of competing against co-action partners before settling on a preference for the unsuccessful partner. This divergent pattern may be due to increased cognitive demands of competitive compared to cooperative tasks. Despite the observed differences of social information use in our cooperative and competitive experimental tasks, the findings are exciting as they extend our knowledge of chimpanzee's social evaluation abilities by showing that they can draw domain-specific inferences about conspecifics' skills.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefanie Keupp
- Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Kellnerweg 4, 37077, Göttingen, Germany.
- Department for Primate Cognition, Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach Institute, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Kellnerweg 4, 37077, Göttingen, Germany.
- Leibniz ScienceCampus, German Primate Center - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Kellnerweg 4, 37077, Göttingen, Germany.
| | - Esther Herrmann
- Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, PO1 2UP, UK
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3
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Tay C, Ng R, Ye NN, Ding XP. Detecting lies through others' eyes: Children use perceptual access cues to evaluate listeners' beliefs about informants' deception. J Exp Child Psychol 2024; 241:105863. [PMID: 38306738 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105863] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/28/2023] [Revised: 01/01/2024] [Accepted: 01/07/2024] [Indexed: 02/04/2024]
Abstract
Children are often third-party observers of conversations between informants and receivers. Although 5- and 6-year-olds can identify and reject informants' false testimony, it remains unclear whether they expect others to do the same. Accurately assessing others' impressions of informants and their testimony in a conversational setting is essential for children's navigation of the social world. Using a novel second-order lie detection task, the current study examined whether 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 74; Mage = 69 months) take receivers' epistemic states into account when predicting whether a receiver would think an informant is truthful or deceptive. We pitted children's firsthand observations of reality against informants' false testimony while manipulating receivers' perceptual access to a sticker-hiding event. Results showed that when the receiver had perceptual access and was knowledgeable, children predicted that the receiver would think the informant is lying. Critically, when the receiver lacked perceptual access and was ignorant, children were significantly more likely to predict that the receiver would think the informant is telling the truth. Second-order theory of mind and executive function strengthened this effect. Findings are interpreted using a dual-process framework and provide new insights into children's understanding of others' selective trust and susceptibility to deception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cleo Tay
- Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117570, Singapore.
| | - Ray Ng
- Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117570, Singapore.
| | - Nina Ni Ye
- Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
| | - Xiao Pan Ding
- Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117570, Singapore.
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4
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Zhao L, Mao H, Harris PL, Lee K. Trusting young children to help causes them to cheat less. Nat Hum Behav 2024:10.1038/s41562-024-01837-4. [PMID: 38379064 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01837-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/07/2023] [Accepted: 01/23/2024] [Indexed: 02/22/2024]
Abstract
Trust and honesty are essential for human interactions. Philosophers since antiquity have long posited that they are causally linked. Evidence shows that honesty elicits trust from others, but little is known about the reverse: does trust lead to honesty? Here we experimentally investigated whether trusting young children to help can cause them to become more honest (total N = 328 across five studies; 168 boys; mean age, 5.94 years; s.d., 0.28 years). We observed kindergarten children's cheating behaviour after they had been entrusted by an adult to help her with a task. Children who were trusted cheated less than children who were not trusted. Our study provides clear evidence for the causal effect of trust on honesty and contributes to understanding how social factors influence morality. This finding also points to the potential of using adult trust as an effective method to promote honesty in children.
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Affiliation(s)
- Li Zhao
- Zhejiang Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory for the Development and Care of Infants and Young Children, Hangzhou, PR China.
- Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, PR China.
| | - Haiying Mao
- Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, PR China
- Department of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Paul L Harris
- Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Kang Lee
- Dr Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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5
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Aguirre M, Brun M, Morin O, Reboul A, Mascaro O. Expectations of Processing Ease, Informativeness, and Accuracy Guide Toddlers' Processing of Novel Communicative Cues. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13373. [PMID: 37950700 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13373] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/18/2022] [Revised: 08/24/2023] [Accepted: 10/20/2023] [Indexed: 11/13/2023]
Abstract
Discovering the meaning of novel communicative cues is challenging and amounts to navigating an unbounded hypothesis space. Several theories posit that this problem can be simplified by relying on positive expectations about the cognitive utility of communicated information. These theories imply that learners should assume that novel communicative cues tend to have low processing costs and high cognitive benefits. We tested this hypothesis in three studies in which toddlers (N = 90) searched for a reward hidden in one of several containers. In all studies, an adult communicated the reward's location with an unfamiliar and ambiguous cue. We manipulated the processing costs (operationalized as inferential chain length) and cognitive benefits (operationalized as informativeness) of the possible interpretations of the cues. Toddlers processing of novel communicative cues were guided by expectations of low processing costs (Study 1) and high cognitive benefits (Studies 2 and 3). More specifically, toddlers treated novel cues as if they were easy to process, informative, and accurate, even when provided with repeated evidence to the contrary. These results indicate that, from toddlerhood onward, expectations of cognitive utility shape the processing of novel communicative cues. These data also reveal that toddlers, who are in the process of learning the language and communicative conventions of people around them, exert a pressure favoring cognitive efficiency in communicative systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marie Aguirre
- Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Institute of Language and Communication Sciences, University of Neuchâtel
| | - Mélanie Brun
- Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center
| | - Olivier Morin
- Institut Jean Nicod, Département d'études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, UMR 8129
- Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology
| | - Anne Reboul
- Laboratory of Cognitive Psychology, UMR 7290, CNRS and Aix-Marseille University
| | - Olivier Mascaro
- Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center
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6
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Yang R, Zhang L, Wu X. In the presence and absence of conflicting testimony, children's selective trust in the in-group informant in moral judgment and knowledge access. J Exp Child Psychol 2023; 231:105664. [PMID: 36913792 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105664] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/06/2022] [Revised: 02/12/2023] [Accepted: 02/14/2023] [Indexed: 03/13/2023]
Abstract
In this study, we assessed whether the trust model formed by children in a moral judgment context with an inaccurate in-group informant affected their corresponding trust model in the knowledge access context and whether conditions (the presence of conflicting testimony: an inaccurate in-group informant paired with an accurate out-group informant; the absence of conflicting testimony: only an inaccurate in-group informant) influenced the trust model. Children aged 3 to 6 years (N = 215; 108 girls) in blue T-shirts as in-group members completed selective trust tasks in the moral judgment and knowledge access contexts. Results for moral judgment showed that children under both conditions were more likely to trust informants based on accurate judgments and gave less consideration to group identity. Results for knowledge access showed that in the presence of conflicting testimony, 3- and 4-year-olds trusted the in-group informant at chance, but 5- and 6-year-olds trusted the accurate informant. In the absence of conflicting testimony, 3- and 4-year-olds agreed more with the inaccurate in-group informant, but 5- and 6-year-olds trusted the in-group informant at chance. The results indicated that older children considered the accuracy of the informant's previous moral judgment for selective trust in the context of knowledge access while ignoring group identity, but that younger children were affected by in-group identity. The study found that 3- to 6-year-olds' trust in inaccurate in-group informants was conditional and that their trust choices appeared to be experimentally conditioned, domain specific, and age differentiated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rui Yang
- School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province 710062, China
| | - Lijin Zhang
- School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province 710062, China; Shaanxi Key Research Center of Child Mental and Behavioral Health, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province 710062, China; Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province 710062, China.
| | - Xiujuan Wu
- School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province 710062, China
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7
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Tong Y, Wang F, Danovitch J, Wang W. Children's trust in image-based online information obtained on their own or relayed by an adult. COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2022.107622] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
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8
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Palmquist CM, Floersheimer A, Crum K, Ruggiero J. Social cognition and trust: Exploring the role of theory of mind and hostile attribution bias in children's skepticism of inaccurate informants. J Exp Child Psychol 2021; 215:105341. [PMID: 34906763 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105341] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/22/2021] [Revised: 09/24/2021] [Accepted: 11/22/2021] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
A growing body of research has examined the role of individual differences in children's selective trust. The current study was designed to explore how individual differences in theory of mind and hostile attribution bias affect children's trust. Four- and five-year-old children took part in a standard selective trust paradigm in which they had the choice between a previously inaccurate informant and an unfamiliar informant. They were also asked to interpret why the previously inaccurate informant had provided incorrect information in the past. Finally, children completed a hostile attribution bias task and a theory of mind task. Children with better theory of mind ability were more likely to defer to the unfamiliar informant on the selective trust task. Children with greater hostile attribution bias were more likely to interpret previous inaccuracy as a result of "being tricky" rather than having "made a mistake." However, these interpretations did not influence children's choices on the selective trust task. Therefore, although there is reason to believe that establishing selective trust involves both cognitive and social processes, the current study raises questions about the nature of this relationship and how children draw on different sociocognitive skills when establishing epistemic trust.
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9
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Yow WQ, Li X. Children consider a speaker’s information privilege and engage in adaptive selective trust in referential cues. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101118] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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10
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Lascaux A. Of Kids and Unicorns: How Rational Is Children's Trust in Testimonial Knowledge? Cogn Sci 2021; 44:e12819. [PMID: 32090379 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12819] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/01/2018] [Revised: 01/24/2020] [Accepted: 01/24/2020] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Abstract
When young children confront a vast array of adults' testimonial claims, they should decide which testimony to endorse. If they are unable to immediately verify the content of testimonial assertions, children adopt or reject their informants' statements on the basis of forming trust in the sources of testimony. This kind of trust needs to be based on some underlying reasons. The rational choice theory, which currently dominates the social, cognitive, and psychological sciences, posits that trust should be formed on a rational basis, as a result of probabilistic assessments and utility-maximizing calculations. In this paper, the predictions stemming from the rational choice approach to trust are systematically compared with the empirical evidence from the field of developmental psychology on how children establish their trust in testimonial statements. The results of this comparison demonstrate an obvious inadequacy of the rational choice explanation of the emergence and development of children's testimonial trust, regardless of which form of trust rationality-weighting, threshold, or ordering-is examined. As none of the three forms of rationality of children's trust in testimony squares with the empirical data, this paper introduces a new version of trust rationality, adaptively rational trust. It explores the compatibility of the concept of adaptively rational trust with the recent empirical findings in the area of developmental psychology and addresses some avenues for future research on the rationality of testimonial trust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Lascaux
- IBS, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Affairs
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11
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Reyes-Jaquez B, Echols CH. Looking beyond person-specific cues indicative of credibility: Reward rules and executive function predict preschoolers' acceptance of (un)reliable assertions. J Exp Child Psychol 2021; 211:105227. [PMID: 34246083 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105227] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/14/2020] [Revised: 06/11/2021] [Accepted: 06/14/2021] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Abstract
We tested whether 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 88) can deduce individuals' credibility exclusively from situational cues such as game rules that reward competitive or cooperative behavior-and whether children's inferences are predicted by their executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) skills. When presented with the game rules, children endorsed a partner's claims more often if the rules incentivized cooperation between participants and partners (e.g., by giving them prizes when trusting each other) versus when the rules incentivized deception (e.g., by giving prizes to partners who tricked the children). Notably, children's appropriate responses to partners' claims increased as their EF skills improved regardless of whether the rules supported trust or skepticism. ToM was not related to children's rule-based selectivity. Preschoolers' ability to make inferences based on cooperative versus competitive reward rules to determine whether the children's partner can be trusted is key to learning from individuals whose reputation or past behavior is completely unknown. In addition, findings of associations between EF and vigilance about others' claims contribute to the epistemological debate of whether people start in life as credulous learners.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bolivar Reyes-Jaquez
- Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
| | - Catharine H Echols
- Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
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12
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Gelman SA, Cuneo N, Kulkarni S, Snay S, Roberts SO. The Roles of Privacy and Trust in Children's Evaluations and Explanations of Digital Tracking. Child Dev 2021; 92:1769-1784. [PMID: 34117781 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13572] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
A "digital revolution" has introduced new privacy violations concerning access to information stored on electronic devices. The present two studies assessed how U.S. children ages 5-17 and adults (N = 416; 55% female; 67% white) evaluated those accessing digital information belonging to someone else, either location data (Study 1) or digital photos (Study 2). The trustworthiness of the tracker (Studies 1 and 2) and the privacy of the information (Study 2) were manipulated. At all ages, evaluations were more negative when the tracker was less trustworthy, and when information was private. However, younger children were substantially more positive overall about digital tracking than older participants. These results, yielding primarily medium-to-large effect sizes, suggest that with age, children increasingly appreciate digital privacy considerations.
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13
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Ghossainy ME, Al-Shawaf L, Woolley JD. Epistemic Vigilance in Early Ontogeny: Children's Use of Nonverbal Behavior to Detect Deception. EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY 2021; 19:1474704920986860. [PMID: 33499655 PMCID: PMC10358419 DOI: 10.1177/1474704920986860] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2020] [Accepted: 12/17/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
This study examines the development of children's ability to modulate their trust in verbal testimony as a function of nonverbal behavior. Participants included 83 children (26 four-year-olds, 29 five-year-olds, and 28 six-year-olds) that were tasked with locating a toy hidden in one of two boxes. Before deciding the location, participants watched a video of an adult providing verbal and nonverbal cues about the location of the toy. We hypothesized that older children would display epistemic vigilance, trusting nonverbal information over verbal information when the two conflict. Consistent with our expectations, when sources were consistent, all children trusted the verbal testimony. By contrast, and as predicted, when they were inconsistent, only 6-year-olds distrusted verbal testimony and favored nonverbal cues; 4- and 5-year-olds continued to trust verbal testimony. Thus, 6-year-old children demonstrate an ability to modulate their trust in verbal testimony as a function of nonverbal information. Younger children's inability to do this is not due to their being unaware of non-verbal behavior; indeed, when nonverbal information was offered exclusively, children of all ages used it to find the object.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maliki E. Ghossainy
- Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, Boston University, MA, USA
| | - Laith Al-Shawaf
- Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO, USA
- National Institute for Human Resilience (NIHR), University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO, USA
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14
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Zhang M, Sylva K. Effects of group membership and visual access on children’s selective trust in competitive and non-competitive contexts. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2020.100972] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
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15
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Young children's developing ability to integrate gestural and emotional cues. J Exp Child Psychol 2020; 201:104984. [PMID: 33038706 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104984] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2020] [Revised: 07/24/2020] [Accepted: 08/11/2020] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
In three studies, children aged 22 to 46 months (N = 180) needed to integrate pointing gestures or gaze cues with positive and negative facial expressions to succeed in an object-choice task. Finding a toy required children to either choose (positive expression) or avoid (negative expression) the indicated target. Study 1 showed that 22-month-olds are better at integrating a positive facial expression with a pointing gesture compared with a negative facial expression with a pointing gesture. Study 2 tracked the integration of negative expressions and pointing across development, finding an unexpected, U-shaped trajectory with group-level success only at 46 months. Study 3 showed that already 34-month-olds succeeded when pointing was replaced with communicative gaze. These findings suggest that at the end of the second year of life, children are generally able to integrate emotional displays and communicative cues such as gestures and ostensive gaze to reevaluate and contextualize utterances. In addition, pointing gestures appear to be understood by young children as a call to act on a referenced object. Findings illustrate that communicative cues should be studied in conjunction with emotional displays to draw an ecologically valid picture of communicative development.
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16
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Kim S, Paulus M, Sodian B, Proust J. Children’s prior experiences of their successes and failures modulate belief alignment. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 2020. [DOI: 10.1080/17405629.2020.1722634] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Sunae Kim
- Faculty of Education and Psychology, Department of Developmental and Clinical Child Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
| | - Markus Paulus
- Developmental and Educational Psychology, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany
| | - Beate Sodian
- Developmental and Educational Psychology, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany
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17
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Li PH, Koenig MA. Children’s Evaluations of Informants and their Surprising Claims in Direct and Overheard Contexts. JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT 2020. [DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2020.1745208] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
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18
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Mascaro O, Sperber D. The pragmatic role of trust in young children's interpretation of unfamiliar signals. PLoS One 2019; 14:e0224648. [PMID: 31665195 PMCID: PMC6821092 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0224648] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/02/2017] [Accepted: 10/18/2019] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
What role does children’s trust in communication play in their acquisition of new meanings? To answer, we report two experimental studies (N = 81) testing how three- to four-year-olds interpret the meaning of a novel communicative device when it is used by a malevolent and potentially deceptive informant. Children participated in a hiding game in which they had to find a reward hidden in one of two boxes. In the initial phase of the experiments, a malevolent informant always indicated the location of the empty box using a novel communicative device, either a marker (Study 1), or an arrow (Study 2). During that phase, 3- and 4-year-olds learned to avoid the box indicated by the novel communicative device. In the second phase of the test, the malevolent informant was replaced by a benevolent one. Nevertheless, children did not change their search strategy, and they kept avoiding the box tagged by the novel communicative device as often as when it had been produced by the malevolent informant. These results suggest that during the initial phase, children (i) did not consider the possibility that the malevolent informant might intend to deceive them, and (ii) did not ignore the unfamiliar communicative signal or treat it as irrelevant. Instead, children relied on the unfamiliar communicative signal to locate the empty box’s location. These results suggest that children’s avoidance of the location indicated by an unfamiliar signal is not unambiguous evidence for distrust of such signal. We argue that children’s trust in ostensive communication is likely to extend to unfamiliar communicative means, and that this presumption of trustworthiness plays a central role in children’s acquisition of new meanings.
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Affiliation(s)
- Olivier Mascaro
- Institute for Cognitive Sciences, CNRS UMR5304/Lyon 1 University, Bron, France
- * E-mail:
| | - Dan Sperber
- Social Mind Center, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
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19
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Ronfard S, Lane JD. Children's and adults' epistemic trust in and impressions of inaccurate informants. J Exp Child Psychol 2019; 188:104662. [PMID: 31470226 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104662] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/23/2019] [Revised: 07/06/2019] [Accepted: 07/08/2019] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
As children and adults interact with new individuals, they make and revise inferences about these individuals' traits and intentions; they build and refine psychological profiles. Here, we examined how this ability develops during early childhood and manifests during adulthood by focusing on the construction of psychological profiles for individuals who have repeatedly provided inaccurate information. Children aged 4-7 years (n = 66) and adults (n = 62) played six rounds of a game in which they needed to find a hidden sticker. In each round, an informant made a claim about the sticker's location, and then participants guessed the sticker's location. In each round, after participants guessed, it was revealed that the informant's claim was incorrect. Across trials, children and adults quickly lost trust in the informant's claims. Children's impressions of the informant's smartness, niceness, and intentions became slightly more negative across trials. In contrast, adults' impressions of the informant's smartness increased, whereas their impressions of the informant's niceness decreased, and adults nearly unanimously judged the informant to be purposely (rather than mistakenly) inaccurate. In sum, children and adults track the accuracy of an informant over time and use this information to update their epistemic trust in the informant. However, based on the same data, children and adults end up with different interpretations of the informant's psychological characteristics-her traits and intentions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Samuel Ronfard
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada.
| | - Jonathan D Lane
- Department of Psychology and Human Development, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203, USA
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20
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"Is it worth my time and effort?": How children selectively gather information from experts when faced with different kinds of costs. J Exp Child Psychol 2018; 179:308-323. [PMID: 30579245 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.11.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2018] [Revised: 11/16/2018] [Accepted: 11/19/2018] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
Gathering good-quality information is important for effective learning, but children may often need to expend time or energy (i.e., costs) in order to do so. In this study, we examined how 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 91) gather information from others when one source of information comes at a cost. Children were given three types of question cards (doctor-related, mechanic-related, and neutral questions) and could assign each question to either a doctor or car mechanic puppet. One puppet (either the doctor or the car mechanic, counterbalanced) could be accessed immediately, but the other puppet required either waiting 30 s or completing a tedious sorting task first. Children's verbal intelligence and executive function skills were also assessed. Results showed that cost influenced how children sought information from each of the expert puppets; children selected the costly expert for domain-relevant questions at chance levels and otherwise strongly preferred to question the non-costly puppet. In addition, executive function skills (but not verbal intelligence) related to how frequently children were willing to direct questions to the costly puppet. Overall, these results indicate that children are influenced by costs when gathering information from others and that their ability to expend a cost to gather good-quality information may relate to their inhibition skills. Implications for encouraging effective learning are discussed.
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21
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Hermes J, Rakoczy H, Behne T. Making sense of conflicting information: A touchscreen paradigm to measure young children's selective trust. INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 2018. [DOI: 10.1002/icd.2119] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Jonas Hermes
- Institute of Psychology, Department of Developmental PsychologyUniversity of Göttingen Göttingen Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition Göttingen Germany
| | - Hannes Rakoczy
- Institute of Psychology, Department of Developmental PsychologyUniversity of Göttingen Göttingen Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition Göttingen Germany
| | - Tanya Behne
- Institute of Psychology, Department of Developmental PsychologyUniversity of Göttingen Göttingen Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition Göttingen Germany
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22
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Why should I trust you? Investigating young children’s spontaneous mistrust in potential deceivers. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2018. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.08.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
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23
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Palmquist CM, Kondrad RL, Norris MN. Follow my point? Preschoolers’ expectations about veridicality disrupt their understanding of deceptive points. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2018. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.08.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
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24
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Pesch A, Koenig MA. Varieties of trust in preschoolers' learning and practical decisions. PLoS One 2018; 13:e0202506. [PMID: 30125319 PMCID: PMC6101396 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202506] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2017] [Accepted: 08/03/2018] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
Abstract
Keeping commitments to others can be difficult, and we know that people sometimes fail to keep them. How does a speaker's ability to keep commitments affect children's practical decisions to trust and their epistemic decisions to learn? An amassing body of research documents children's trust in testimonial learning decisions, which can be moved in the face of epistemic and moral evidence about an agent. However, other bases for trust go largely unexplored in this literature, such as interpersonal reasons to trust. Here, we investigated how direct bids for interpersonal trust in the form of making commitments, or obligations to the listener, influence a range of decisions toward that agent. We found that 3- and 4-year-olds' (N = 75) practical decisions to wait and to share were moved as a function of a person's commitment-keeping ability, but epistemic decisions to learn were not. Keeping one's commitments may provide children with interpersonal reasons to trust, reasons that may function in ways distinct from the considerations that bear on accepting a claim.
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Affiliation(s)
- Annelise Pesch
- Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States of America
| | - Melissa A. Koenig
- Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States of America
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25
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Ma F, Heyman GD, Xiao L, Xu F, Compton BJ, Lee K. Modesty can promote trust: Evidence from China. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 2018. [DOI: 10.1111/sode.12327] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Fengling Ma
- Department of Psychology; Zhejiang Sci-Tech University; Hangzhou China
| | - Gail D. Heyman
- Department of Psychology; University of California San Diego; La Jolla California
- Department of Psychology; Zhejiang Normal University; Jinhua China
| | - Li Xiao
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning; Beijing Normal University; Beijing China
| | - Fen Xu
- Department of Psychology; Zhejiang Sci-Tech University; Hangzhou China
| | - Brian J. Compton
- Department of Psychology; Zhejiang Normal University; Jinhua China
| | - Kang Lee
- Institute of Child Study; University of Toronto; Toronto Ontario Canada
- Department of Psychology; Zhejiang Normal University; Jinhua China
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26
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Brosseau-Liard PE, Iannuzziello A, Varin J. Savvy or Haphazard? Comparing Preschoolers’ Performance Across Selective Learning Tasks Based on Different Epistemic Indicators. JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT 2018. [DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2018.1495219] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
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27
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Abstract
There has been extensive research into the development of selective trust in testimony, but little is known about the development of selective trust in promises. The present research investigates children's (N = 264) selective trust in others' promises to help. In Study 1, 6-year-olds selectively trusted speakers who had previously kept a promise. In Study 2, 5-year-olds displayed selective trust for speakers who had previously kept a prosocial promise (promise to help). In Study 3, 5-year-olds trusted a speaker, who kept a prosocial promise, over a helper. These data suggest that from the age of 5 children show selective trust in others' promises using prosociality, promise keeping, or both to inform their judgments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Margherita Isella
- Vita-Salute San Raffaele University.,Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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28
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Abstract
In the current study, 24- to 27-month-old children (N = 37) used pointing gestures in a cooperative object choice task with either peer or adult partners. When indicating the location of a hidden toy, children pointed equally accurately for adult and peer partners but more often for adult partners. When choosing from one of three hiding places, children used adults' pointing to find a hidden toy significantly more often than they used peers'. In interaction with peers, children's choice behavior was at chance level. These results suggest that toddlers ascribe informative value to adults' but not peers' pointing gestures, and highlight the role of children's social expectations in their communicative development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gregor Kachel
- Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.,Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, Germany
| | - Richard Moore
- Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.,Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
| | - Michael Tomasello
- Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.,Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, North Carolina, USA
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29
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Vanderbilt KE, Heyman GD, Liu D. Young children show more vigilance against individuals with poor knowledge than those with antisocial motives. INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 2018. [DOI: 10.1002/icd.2078] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/10/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | | | - David Liu
- University of Oklahoma; Norman OK USA
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30
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Hermes J, Behne T, Rakoczy H. The Development of Selective Trust: Prospects for a Dual-Process Account. CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES 2018. [DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12274] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Jonas Hermes
- University of Göttingen and Leibniz Science Campus Primate Cognition
| | - Tanya Behne
- University of Göttingen and Leibniz Science Campus Primate Cognition
| | - Hannes Rakoczy
- University of Göttingen and Leibniz Science Campus Primate Cognition
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31
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Mascaro O, Morin O, Sperber D. Optimistic expectations about communication explain children's difficulties in hiding, lying, and mistrusting liars. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2017; 44:1041-1064. [PMID: 27748210 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000916000350] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/06/2023]
Abstract
We suggest that preschoolers' frequent obliviousness to the risks and opportunities of deception comes from a trusting stance supporting verbal communication. Three studies (N = 125) confirm this hypothesis. Three-year-olds can hide information from others (Study 1) and they can lie (Study 2) in simple settings. Yet when one introduces the possibility of informing others in the very same settings, three-year-olds tend to be honest (Studies 1 and 2). Similarly, four-year-olds, though capable of treating assertions as false, trust deceptive informants (Study 3). We suggest that children's reduced sensitivity to the opportunities of lying, and to the risks of being lied to might help explain their difficulties on standard false belief tasks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Olivier Mascaro
- Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod (CNRS UMR5304/Université de Lyon);Central European University,Budapest;Jean Nicod Institute (CNRS UMR8129),Paris
| | - Olivier Morin
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History,Jena;Central European University,Budapest;Jean Nicod Institute (CNRS UMR8129),Paris
| | - Dan Sperber
- Central European University,Budapest;Jean Nicod Institute (CNRS UMR8129),Paris
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32
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Abstract
Humans acquire much of their knowledge from the testimony of other people. An understanding of the way that information can be conveyed via gesture and vocalization is present in infancy. Thus, infants seek information from well-informed interlocutors, supply information to the ignorant, and make sense of communicative acts that they observe from a third-party perspective. This basic understanding is refined in the course of development. As they age, children's reasoning about testimony increasingly reflects an ability not just to detect imperfect or inaccurate claims but also to assess what inferences may or may not be drawn about informants given their particular situation. Children also attend to the broader characteristics of particular informants-their group membership, personality characteristics, and agreement or disagreement with other potential informants. When presented with unexpected or counterintuitive testimony, children are prone to set aside their own prior convictions, but they may sometimes defer to informants for inherently social reasons.
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Affiliation(s)
- Paul L Harris
- Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138;
| | - Melissa A Koenig
- Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55436;
| | | | - Vikram K Jaswal
- Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904;
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33
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Kushnir T, Koenig MA. What I don't know won't hurt you: The relation between professed ignorance and later knowledge claims. Dev Psychol 2017; 53:826-835. [PMID: 28358533 DOI: 10.1037/dev0000294] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Testimony is a valuable source of information for young learners, in particular if children maintain vigilance against errors while still being open to learning from imperfectly knowledgeable sources. We find support for this idea by examining how children evaluate individual speakers who present very different epistemic risks by being previously ignorant or inaccurate. Results across 2 experiments show that children attribute knowledge to (Experiment 1) and endorse new claims made by speakers (Experiment 2) who previously professed ignorance about familiar object labels, but not to speakers whose labels were previously inaccurate. Study 2 further clarifies that children are not simply relying on links between informational access and knowledge; children rejected testimony from a previously inaccurate speaker even when she had perceptual access to support her claim. These results show that children actively monitor the reliability of a speaker's knowledge claims, distinguish unreliable speakers from those who sometimes admit ignorance, raising new questions about how such admissions factor in to children's appraisal of the scope and limits of a person's knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record
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34
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McDonald KP, Ma L. Preschoolers' credulity toward misinformation from ingroup versus outgroup speakers. J Exp Child Psychol 2016; 148:87-100. [PMID: 27135169 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.03.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/13/2015] [Revised: 03/11/2016] [Accepted: 03/16/2016] [Indexed: 11/12/2022]
Abstract
The current research examined preschoolers' credulity toward misinformation from ingroup versus outgroup speakers. Experiment 1 showed that when searching for a hidden toy, Caucasian English monolingual 4-year-olds were credulous toward the false testimony of a race-and-accent ingroup speaker, despite their firsthand observations of the hiding event, but were skeptical when the false testimony was provided by a race-and-accent outgroup speaker. In the same experiment, 3-year-olds were credulous toward the false testimony of both speakers. Experiment 2 showed that when the false testimony was provided by a same-race-only or same-accent-only speaker, 4-year-olds were not particularly credulous or skeptical. The findings are discussed in relation to how intergroup bias might contribute to the selective credulity in the 4-year-olds as well as the factors that might explain the indiscriminate credulity in the 3-year-olds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kyla P McDonald
- Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3, Canada
| | - Lili Ma
- Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3, Canada.
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35
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Nguyen SP, Gordon CL, Chevalier T, Girgis H. Trust and doubt: An examination of children's decision to believe what they are told about food. J Exp Child Psychol 2015; 144:66-83. [PMID: 26704303 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2015.10.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/06/2015] [Revised: 10/19/2015] [Accepted: 10/27/2015] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
Abstract
The domain of food is one that is highly relevant and vital to the everyday lives of children. However, children's reasoning about this domain is poorly understood within the field of developmental psychology. Because children's learning about food, including its evaluative components (e.g., health, taste) is so heavily dependent on information conveyed by other people, a major developmental challenge that children face is determining who to distrust regarding food. In three studies, this investigation examined how 3- and 4-year-olds and adults (N=312) use different cues to determine when to ignore informant information (i.e., distrust what an informant tells them by choosing an alternative) in food- and non-food-specific scenarios. The results of Study 1 indicated that by age 4 years, children are less trusting of inaccurate sources of information compared with sources that have not demonstrated previous inaccuracy. Study 2 revealed that these results are applicable across the domain of objects. The results of Study 3 indicated that by age 4, children trust benevolent sources more often than malevolent ones. Thus, when reasoning about the evaluative components of food, by age 4, children appraise other people's untrustworthiness by paying attention to their inaccuracy and malevolence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Simone P Nguyen
- Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC 28403, USA.
| | - Cameron L Gordon
- Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC 28403, USA
| | - Tess Chevalier
- Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC 28403, USA
| | - Helana Girgis
- Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC 28403, USA
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36
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McDonald KP, Ma L. Dress Nicer = Know More? Young Children's Knowledge Attribution and Selective Learning Based on How Others Dress. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0144424. [PMID: 26636980 PMCID: PMC4670195 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0144424] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2015] [Accepted: 11/18/2015] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
This research explored whether children judge the knowledge state of others and selectively learn novel information from them based on how they dress. The results indicated that 4- and 6-year-olds identified a formally dressed individual as more knowledgeable about new things in general than a casually dressed one (Study 1). Moreover, children displayed an overall preference to seek help from a formally dressed individual rather than a casually dressed one when learning about novel objects and animals (Study 2). These findings are discussed in relation to the halo effect, and may have important implications for child educators regarding how instructor dress might influence young students' knowledge attribution and learning preferences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kyla P. McDonald
- Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Lili Ma
- Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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37
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Banerjee R, Pal SK. Z*-numbers: Augmented Z-numbers for machine-subjectivity representation. Inf Sci (N Y) 2015. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ins.2015.06.026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
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38
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Ng R, Fillet P, DeWitt M, Heyman GD, Bellugi U. Reasoning About Trust Among Individuals With Williams Syndrome. AMERICAN JOURNAL ON INTELLECTUAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES 2015; 120:527-541. [PMID: 26505873 DOI: 10.1352/1944-7558-120.6.527] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/05/2023]
Abstract
The present study examines whether individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) might indiscriminately trust in others, as is suggested by their strong tendency to approach and interact with strangers. To assess this possibility, adults with WS (N=22) and typical development (N=25) were asked to reason about the trustworthiness of people who lie to avoid getting in trouble versus to avoid hurting others' feelings. Findings indicated that participants with WS distrusted both types of liars and made little distinction between them. These results suggest that the high level of social approach behavior in individuals with WS cannot be explained in terms of indiscriminate trust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rowena Ng
- Rowena Ng, Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
| | - Patricia Fillet
- Patricia Fillet and Michelle DeWitt, Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
| | - Michelle DeWitt
- Patricia Fillet and Michelle DeWitt, Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
| | - Gail D Heyman
- Gail D. Heyman, Department of Psychology, University of California-San Diego; and
| | - Ursula Bellugi
- Ursula Bellugi, Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
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39
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Kominsky JF, Langthorne P, Keil FC. The better part of not knowing: Virtuous ignorance. Dev Psychol 2015; 52:31-45. [PMID: 26479546 DOI: 10.1037/dev0000065] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Suppose you are presented with 2 informants who have provided answers to the same question. One provides a precise and confident answer, and the other says that they do not know. If you were asked which of these 2 informants was more of an expert, intuitively you would select the informant who provided the certain answer over the ignorant informant. However, for cases in which precise information is practically or actually unknowable (e.g., the number of leaves on all the trees in the world), certainty and confidence indicate a lack of competence, while expressions of ignorance may indicate greater expertise. In 3 experiments, we investigated whether children and adults are able to use this "virtuous ignorance" as a cue to expertise. Experiment 1 found that adults and children older than 9 years selected confident informants for knowable information and ignorant informants for unknowable information. However, 5-6-year-olds overwhelmingly favored the confident informant, even when such certainty was completely implausible. In Experiment 2 we replicated the results of Experiment 1 with a new set of items focused on predictions about the future, rather than numerical information. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that 5-8-year-olds and adults are both able to distinguish between knowable and unknowable items when asked how difficult the information would be to acquire, but those same children failed to reject the precise and confident informant for unknowable items. We suggest that children have difficulty integrating information about the knowability of particular facts into their evaluations of expertise. (PsycINFO Database Record
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40
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Mascaro O, Morin O. Epistemology for Beginners: Two- to Five-Year-Old Children's Representation of Falsity. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0140658. [PMID: 26484675 PMCID: PMC4618725 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0140658] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/19/2014] [Accepted: 09/29/2015] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
This paper investigates the ontogeny of human's naive concept of truth. Surprisingly, children find it hard to treat assertions as false before their fifth birthday. Yet, we show in six studies (N = 140) that human's concept of falsity develops early. Two-year-olds use truth-functional negation to exclude one term in an alternative (Study 1). Three-year-olds can evaluate discrepancies between the content of a representation and what it aims at representing (Study 2). They use this knowledge to treat beliefs and assertions as false (Study 3). Four-year-olds recognise the involutive nature of falsity ascriptions: they properly infer 'p' from 'It is not true that "It is not true that "p""' (Study 4), an inference that rests on second-order representations of representations. Controls confirm that children do not merely equate being mistaken with failing to achieve one's goal (Studies 5 and 6). These results demonstrate remarkable capacities to evaluate representations, and indicate that in the absence of formal training, young children develop the building blocks of a theory of truth and falsity-a naive epistemology. We suggest that children's difficulties in discarding false assertions need not reflect any conceptual lacuna, and may originate from their being trustful.
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Affiliation(s)
- Olivier Mascaro
- Jean Nicod Institute, Paris, France
- Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
- Laboratoire sur le Language, le Cerveau et la Cognition, L2C2, CNRS/Lyon1 University, UMR5304, Lyon, France
| | - Olivier Morin
- Jean Nicod Institute, Paris, France
- Social Mind Center, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
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41
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Mitchell IJ, Gillespie SM, Abu-Akel A. Similar effects of intranasal oxytocin administration and acute alcohol consumption on socio-cognitions, emotions and behaviour: Implications for the mechanisms of action. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2015; 55:98-106. [PMID: 25956250 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.04.018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/24/2014] [Revised: 04/15/2015] [Accepted: 04/25/2015] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
Oxytocin (OT) plays a critical role in the formation of long lasting social attachments across a range of mammalian species. Raising intracerebral OT levels by intranasal administration of the neuropeptide (inOT) can also have pronounced effects on human sociocognitive functioning. inOT has been associated with increasing altruism, generosity, empathy and trust while decreasing fear, anxiety and stress reactions via neural mechanisms which are yet to be fully elucidated. The observation of the prosocial effects of OT has led to speculation about the role the peptide might play in some psychiatric conditions and debate as to its potential therapeutic uses. Here we note the great similarity in the sociocognitive effects that can be induced by inOT and the effects of acute consumption of modest does of alcohol. We further reflect on how both compounds may act on limbic and prefrontal cortical structures to increase GABAergic transmission, thereby facilitating the release of prepotent responses, that is, more automatic responses which are associated with earlier developmental stages.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ian J Mitchell
- School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B152TT, UK
| | | | - Ahmad Abu-Akel
- School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B152TT, UK
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42
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Fu G, Heyman GD, Chen G, Liu P, Lee K. Children trust people who lie to benefit others. J Exp Child Psychol 2014; 129:127-39. [PMID: 25443139 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2014.09.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 30] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/19/2014] [Revised: 09/09/2014] [Accepted: 09/09/2014] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
The current research examined whether children consider who benefits from lies when judging the trustworthiness of liars. Across two studies (total N=214), 6- to 11-year-olds trusted individuals who lied to promote the interests of others, but not those who lied to promote their own interests. In contrast, children trusted individuals who told the truth regardless of who benefited. Trust in individuals who lied to promote the interests of others was evident even in the absence of moral approval for their actions. These results demonstrate that children take into account both the truth value of a speaker's statements and who benefits when assessing trustworthiness and that moral approval is not a prerequisite for trust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Genyue Fu
- Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province 321004, China
| | - Gail D Heyman
- Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province 321004, China; Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
| | - Guowei Chen
- Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province 321004, China
| | - Peilong Liu
- Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province 321004, China
| | - Kang Lee
- Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province 321004, China; Erick Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada
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43
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Takaoka A, Maeda T, Hori Y, Fujita K. Do dogs follow behavioral cues from an unreliable human? Anim Cogn 2014; 18:475-83. [PMID: 25348065 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-014-0816-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/09/2014] [Revised: 10/10/2014] [Accepted: 10/20/2014] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
Dogs are known to consistently follow human pointing gestures. In this study, we asked whether dogs "automatically" do this or whether they flexibly adjust their behavior depending upon the reliability of the pointer, demonstrated in an immediately preceding event. We tested pet dogs in a version of the object choice task in which a piece of food was hidden in one of the two containers. In Experiment 1, Phase 1, an experimenter pointed at the baited container; the second container was empty. In Phase 2, after showing the contents of both containers to the dogs, the experimenter pointed at the empty container. In Phase 3, the procedure was exactly as in Phase 1. We compared the dogs' responses to the experimenter's pointing gestures in Phases 1 and 3. Most dogs followed pointing in Phase 1, but many fewer did so in Phase 3. In Experiment 2, dogs followed a new experimenter's pointing in Phase 3 following replication of procedures of Phases 1 and 2 in Experiment 1. This ruled out the possibility that dogs simply lost motivation to participate in the task in later phases. These results suggest that not only dogs are highly skilled at understanding human pointing gestures, but also they make inferences about the reliability of a human who presents cues and consequently modify their behavior flexibly depending on the inference.
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Affiliation(s)
- Akiko Takaoka
- Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Sakyo, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan,
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Jaswal VK, Pérez-Edgar K, Kondrad RL, Palmquist CM, Cole CA, Cole CE. Can't stop believing: inhibitory control and resistance to misleading testimony. Dev Sci 2014; 17:965-76. [DOI: 10.1111/desc.12187] [Citation(s) in RCA: 54] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/06/2013] [Accepted: 02/13/2014] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | - Caitlin A. Cole
- Institute of Child Development; University of Minnesota; USA
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Li QG, Heyman GD, Xu F, Lee K. Young children's use of honesty as a basis for selective trust. J Exp Child Psychol 2013; 117:59-72. [PMID: 24149377 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2013.09.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2013] [Revised: 08/31/2013] [Accepted: 09/04/2013] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
The ability of 3- to 5-year-old children to reason about trust in relation to the honest behavior of others was examined across five studies (total N=496). Results showed that although 4-year-olds differentiated between honest and dishonest sources in their trust judgments, only 5-year-olds demonstrated a clear capacity to differentiate between honesty and a trust-irrelevant dimension (i.e., cleanliness) in these trust judgments. This was seen in their tendency to trust honest characters more than clean ones and to distrust dishonest characters more than unclean ones. This was also seen in their tendency to choose honest unclean characters over dishonest clean ones in their trust judgments. Results suggest that children use honesty as a basis for selective trust even before they appreciate which specific traits are relevant to trust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qing-Gong Li
- Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua 321004, China.
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