Poster #117 - Children Weigh Informants’ Explanation Quality Over Their Power in Explaining Present, but not Future, Questions

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

From early childhood, children actively ask questions and selectively endorse explanations from reliable informants to learn. Children use both epistemic and social cues in evaluating the informants’ credibility. Specifically, when seeking explanations to both current and future questions, children prefer to learn from informants (a) who have provided high-quality explanations or (b) who possess social power (Corriveau & Kurkul, 2014; Ma et al. 2021). When epistemic cues conflict with social cues, children substantially weigh epistemic cues over social cues in answering present questions (Castelain et al. 2015), but how children would evaluate informants’ future credibility under this circumstance remains unclear. Here, we hypothesized that children would weigh informants’ explanation quality over their power when seeking explanations to present, but not future, questions.

Forty-five Chinese children (20 girls; Mage = 5.88, SDage = 0.62, from 4.92 to 7.69 years) participated in Study 1, and another 45 Chinese children (21 girls; Mage = 5.63, SDage = 0.39, from 4.75 to 6.59 years) participated in Study 2. In Study 1, children were shown two puppets explaining the same scientific phenomena (e.g., “Why does rain fall?”) across four trials. One puppet always provided circular (i.e., low-quality) explanations, whereas the other puppet provided non-circular (i.e., high-quality) explanations. Participants indicated which puppet’s explanations they endorsed. Afterward, the two puppets offered different explanations for the functions of novel objects across four trials, and participants also indicated which puppet’s explanations they endorsed. In Study 2, children were shown that a dominant puppet possessed decisional power over a subordinate puppet, as the latter always obeyed the former’s decisions. Next, the dominant puppet always provided circular explanations, whereas the subordinate puppet always provided non-circular explanations to the same questions. Children then completed the same tasks as in Study 1 (see Table 1).

We found that children always prioritized explanation quality in seeking information to explain present questions, but they did not weigh informants’ explanation quality over their power in seeking future information (see Figure 1). In Study 1, children were 3.50 times more likely to endorse the non-circular explanations than the circular explanations of the scientific phenomena, p < .001. In seeking explanations for the functions of novel objects, children were also 1.71 times more likely to trust the puppet who had provided the non-circulation explanations in the past than the other puppet, p < .001. In Study 2, after seeing the dominant puppet providing circular explanations and the subordinate providing non-circular explanations, children were still 3.56 times more likely to endorse the non-circular explanations than the circular explanations of the scientific phenomena, p < .001. However, in seeking future explanations of the novel object functions, they did not significantly trust one puppet over the other, OR = 1.10, p = .593.

Our research suggests that children rely on epistemic cues over social cues in seeking explanations to present questions, but they may weigh both cues equally when evaluating the credibility of informants for future information. The findings offer insights into understanding children’s learning processes in selecting between information sources.

Authors

• Shaocong Ma, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

• Yixin Kelly Cui, Boston University

• Eva E. Chen, National Tsing Hua University
  Presenting Author

• Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University