2-008 - To trust or not to trust? A conversation on children’s selective trust.

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Integrative Statement

Past research has shown that children can use information, such as history of accuracy, familiarity, age, gender, accent, etc. to modulate their learning and judgment of other people. While most studies suggest that children prefer to learn from an accurate informant rather than an inaccurate one, they are also willing to accept an inaccurate informant as a potential source of information. More recent work has extended children’s selective trust beyond word learning to other domains such as communicative cues, attractiveness, social promise, STEM learning, as well as technological sources (e.g., computer, robots and even AI). However, there are several major theoretical and methodological issues that remain unaddressed to date. For example, what are the theoretical accounts or mechanisms that contribute children’s selective trust? Is there a unified theory that fully explains the literature on the development of selective trust? What is known about the characteristics of the learner that interact with context and cognitive skills in selective trust? Is selective learning a form of cultural learning? Apart from accuracy, are there new dependent variables necessary to examine selective trust in a nuanced way? Is there a more ecologically valid way to establish history of accuracy? These issues are of significant interests to researchers and scholars in this field. This conversational roundtable aims to generate vibrant discussions among the panelists and audience with various perspectives, as well as to provide a platform to bring people together to share their experiences and views on this topic. Vikram Jaswal will be the Moderator.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Moderator

• Vikram K. Jaswal, University of Virginia

Panelists

• Diane Poulin-Dubois, Concordia University

• Kimberly Vanderbilt, California State University San Marcos

• W. Quin Yow, Singapore University of Technology & Design