Children’s Understanding of Verification is a Necessary Condition for Helpful and Effective Teaching

• In Event: 3-183 - When is Knowledge Justified? Investigating Children’s Epistemic Understanding

Integrative Statement

Testimony, information transferred from others, is an incredibly lucrative learning tool, particularly for young children. However, children’s reliance on others for information also presents them with serious epistemological challenges: they must frequently make judgments about reliability, oftentimes without knowing whether the information is actually true. Here, we examined the extent to which children understand the process of verification, the act of accruing supporting evidence for claims, and whether other relevant epistemic cues might interact with this understanding.
In study 1, three to- 7-year-olds (N=72) were shown digital puppet shows depicting puppet actors interacting with various objects and making either verified or unverified claims. In the accuracy trials, children witnessed two puppets provide conflicting labels for familiar objects. In the verification trials, children witnessed two new puppets provide conflicting claims as to the contents of a box: one puppet consistently looked inside the box, while the other simply looked to the box’s surface. After each trial, children were then prompted to select which of the two informants they believed a naive, third learner should listen to, and to provide justifications for their selections. Children of all ages were nearly at ceiling in selecting the consistently accurate puppet on behalf of the naive learner (all ps <.05), and showed a significantly above-chance understanding of the importance of verification as requisite for reliability in the verification trials (4- and 5-year-olds (M=2.88, t(23) = 2.95, p=.007); 6- and 7-year-olds (M=3.63, t(23) = 12.31, p<.001)).
In study 2, we sought to address the issue that children rarely, if ever, receive information from persons in the absence of other epistemic cues. An additional 32 4- to- 7-year-olds were shown the same procedure as in study 1, but with consistent puppet actors across all trials, such that a pattern of accuracy or inaccuracy was established. This pattern of accuracy was made either congruent in test trials, where the consistently accurate puppet actor also successfully verified their claims, or incongruent, where the accurate puppet actor failed to verify, while the previously inaccurate puppet actor successfully did so. Four- and 5-year-olds in this study were significantly above chance in selecting the verifying puppet only in the congruent condition (M=1.56, SD=.716t(31)=4.45, p<.001), but were at chance in the incongruent trials (M=1.03, SD=.822, t(31)=.226, p=.823). Six- and 7-year-olds performed above chance on both congruent trials (M=1.44, SD=.716,t(31)=3.26, p=.003) and incongruent trials (M=1.38, SD=.609, t(31)=3.48, p=.002).
These findings suggest that preschool-aged children are in the midst of constructing an understanding of the process of verification and under what circumstances it can be considered justified. However, the capacity to determine reliability when there are conflicting, seemingly relevant epistemic cues poses more difficulty for younger children than older children, indicating the presence of a developmental trend underlying the ability to navigate this epistemological challenge.

Authors

• Hailey Gibbs, University of Maryland College Park
  Presenting Author

• Nadia S. Tavassolie, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lucas Payne Butler, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author