Children’s Intuitions About the Sources of Different Knowledge Kinds

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

From an early age, children are remarkably sensitive to own and others’ epistemic states (e.g., Birch, Vauthier, & Bloom, 2008; Pratt & Bryant, 1990). While it is often reported that children learn most of what they know from others, children’s own assumptions about the sources of their knowledge across different knowledge kinds has not been systematically investigated. The current study examines children’s intuitions about how they have acquired different kinds of knowledge such as knowledge of cultural artifacts and unobservable generic facts.
We tested 28 children between the ages of 5 and 8 (12 females and 16 males, Mage = 5.85, SD = .79), online via Zoom. Children were presented with 28 knowledge items that are divided into 7 categories (observable knowledge about the self, cultural artifacts, social norms, moral norms, general observable knowledge, procedural knowledge, knowledge about invisible processes and things). Children were asked 3 questions regarding each knowledge item. These questions were asked as in the following order for every item: “Do you know X?” and “Did you learn X on your own or from another person?”. Subsequently, if the participants answered the previous question as “on my own”, they were asked “How did you learn X?”. If they answered the question as “from another person”, they were asked “Whom did you learn this X?”.
Data collection is ongoing, but the findings so far suggest that children distinguish between various knowledge categories in terms of whether they had acquired it on their own vs. from someone else (F(6, 162) = 15.57, p < .001) (See Figure 1). Further, a qualitative examination of children’s source reports reveals that among knowledge categories that are similar in terms of the frequency with which children reported others as sources, there seem to be intriguing differences. For instance, while teachers are reported most frequently as sources of social and moral norm knowledge, parents are reported most frequently as sources of knowledge of cultural artifacts (i.e., songs, stories etc.). Upon completing data collection and coding of children’s answers, these trends will be assessed statistically. The implications of these findings regarding children’s source monitoring and their learning will be discussed.

Authors

• Pınar Karan, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi (BOUN)
  Presenting Author

• Şeyma Esra Doğru, Boğaziçi University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Özdeş Çetin, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi (BOUN)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gaye Soley, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi (BOUN)
  Non-Presenting Author