Poster #190 - Do Children Consider the Reasons for Inaccuracy When Deciding to Trust or not to Trust a Speaker’s Communicative Cues?

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Children are sensitive to the accuracy of a speaker’s non-verbal communicative cues (such as point and gaze) and they can use this information to evaluate potential informants. Previous research has shown that 4-year-olds not only are more willing to seek further information from a previously accurate pointer/gazer over one who has been an inaccurate pointer/gazer (Palmquist & Jaswal, 2015), but they also are more likely to use communicative cues provided by an accurate than inaccurate speaker in a subsequent task (Yow & Tan, 2017). However, in a typical paradigm assessing selective trust, it is usually unclear why the speaker provides inaccurate cues. It was found that children believe a puppet’s testimony more when its inaccuracy was excusable on the grounds of inadequate access than when it was not (Nurmsoo & Robinson, 2009). Left unknown is whether children take into account the reason for inaccuracy when evaluating potential informants based on their communicative cues. The present work examines whether children appropriately excuse an informant’s past inaccuracy arising from limited information access.

Fifty-six 4-year-olds (M=4.57 years old, SD=0.40; 22 females) participated in the study. During a familiarization phase, children witnessed a confederate hide a sticker in one of two boxes while an experimenter’s view was blocked. The experimenter then “guessed” where the sticker was (see Figure 1a): she consistently pointed/gazed either toward the box that contained a sticker (accurate condition; n=28), or the empty box (inaccurate condition; n=28). Subsequently, in the test phase, all children played a hiding game that relied on the cues provided by the experimenter—the experimenter hid a sticker in one of two opaque boxes, and then asked the children to select the box that had the sticker in it while providing the correct point/gaze cues (Figure 1b). The location of the sticker was not revealed on these test trials. As a manipulation check, the experimenter left the room at the end of the game and the confederate asked the children if the experimenter could see where the sticker was when her view was blocked during the familiarization phase.

ANOVA on children’s test performance with condition (accurate vs. inaccurate) and manipulation (pass vs. fail) revealed significant main effects of condition, F(1,52)=5.53, p=.023, and a significant Condition x Manipulation interaction on children’s trust, F(1,52)=7.11, p=.010 (see Figure 2). For children who passed the manipulation check (accurate=20, inaccurate=16), they used the communicative cues provided by accurate and inaccurate experimenters equally in the test phase (4.90 vs. 5.06, Z=0.41, p=.68; Mann-Whitney U test). In contrast, children who failed the manipulation check were more likely to use the accurate experimenter’s communicative cues than the inaccurate experimenter (5.75 vs. 3.17, Z=2.33, p=.020).

In sum, 4-year-olds appropriately excuse a speaker’s past inaccuracy if they believe it can be explained by her (lack of) information access. This implies that children pay attention to the reasons for inaccuracy and it requires children’s mentalistic reasoning to do so. The findings provide insight into how children make inferences about others’ mistakes (e.g., knowledgeability vs. intent) in communicative settings.

Authors

• Xiaoqian Li, Singapore University of Technology and Design
  Presenting Author

• W. Quin Yow, Singapore University of Technology & Design
  Non-Presenting Author