Poster #26 - Children's use of testimony to determine reality status

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Because young children cannot discover everything about the world around them through experience, they are dependent upon others’ testimony as they learn (Harris & Koenig, 2006; Jaswal, 2004; Koenig, Clement & Harris, 2004). However, testimony is often wrong and people often contradict each other. To sort accurate from inaccurate input, children must attend to the source of the testimony they receive. Research shows that children value adult testimony over that of their peers in most domains, but defer to children in cases in which they are deemed to be the experts (e.g., regarding toys; Vanderborght & Jaswal, 2009). Others’ testimony is critical regarding the existence of fantastical beings, as children never encounter them face to face. Instead, children tend to rely on adults for information about fantasy figures such as Santa Claus (Clarke, 1995; Baxter & Sabbagh, 2005), indicating that they might prefer adults as suppliers of such information. However, most children eventually come to question the existence of these figures (Tullos & Woolley, 2009). At this time, they might value and utilize testimony that is counter to the beliefs espoused by adults around them.
Seventy-five 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds were presented with novel entities and asked to judge their reality status. For each entity, children received information from both an adult and a same-aged child. There were 4 types of trials: (1) The adult claims the entity is real but the child claims it is pretend, (2) The child claims the entity is real and the adult claims it is pretend, (3) Both claim that the entity is real, and (4) Both claim that it is pretend. Children were asked to indicate: (1) who they wanted to ask for information, (2) whose testimony they endorsed (i.e., did they judge the entity as real or pretend?), and (3) who knows more about what things are real and what things are pretend.
Six- (M = .90) and 8-year-olds (M = .84) indicated that they preferred to ask the adult for information and that adults knew more about real and pretend (M = .89 and M = .80 respectively) at levels significantly above chance (p < .001 for both), whereas 4-year-olds were at chance on both questions. However, 6- and 8-year-olds used testimony differently. Six-year-olds were significantly more likely to judge the entities as real if an adult claimed they were real (M = .62) than if a child did (M = .22), p < .001. By contrast, 8-year-olds were equally likely to endorse adult and peer testimony (M = .48 and M = .37, respectively).
Summarizing, by age 6, children appear to consider adults to be more reliable sources of information about reality status. However, whereas 6-year-olds’ endorsement of testimony reflected their explicit avowals, 8-year-olds’ endorsements seemed to reflect a decreased trust in adults and an increased trust in their peers. Ongoing studies assess first, whether decreasing trust in adults or increasing trust in peers is more critical, and second, relations between differential trust and children’s skepticism regarding various fantastical beings.

Authors

• Jenny Nissel, University of Texas
  Presenting Author

• Jacqueline D. Woolley, The University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author