Poster #79 - Young Children’s Preference for Teaching Sensationalized Information

• In Event: Poster Session 02

Abstract

Prior literature in the field of children’s pedagogical cognition has shown that young children are quite adept when placed in a pedagogical role: they use more generic language, tailor the content of their instruction to the knowledge and abilities of the learner, and teach veridical information (Baer & Friedman, 2018; Gelman et al., 2016; Gweon et al., 2018; Pueschel et al., submitted). A factor that has been shown to influence adults’ propensity to spread information is the information’s sensational character (Chen et al., 2015). Sensational information is information that is attention-grabbing, interest-provoking, and surprising. To our knowledge, nothing is known about children’s tendency to teach sensational information. The present study investigates whether children tend to teach sensational rather than neutral information (Experiment 1), and whether their potential preference for sensational information shifts when sensationalism is pitted against veracity (Experiment 2). In a Pilot Experiment (N = 18), 5- to 8-year-olds were asked to select which of two statements they found more sensational in 14 trials (the more child-friendly term “interesting” was used). One statement was sensational (“Caks have three brains”) and the other statement was neutral (“Caks sleep at night”). Novel animals were chosen to avoid biases resulting from prior knowledge. With the exception of two items, at least 16 out of 18 children judged the sensational statement as more interesting. The two exceptional items were excluded from the following experiments. In Experiment 1 (N = 24, 12 female), 5-year-olds were presented with 12 pairs of information (those selected after the Pilot Experiment) from which they chose one item each to teach to a learner (see Figure 1). Results revealed that children taught significantly more sensational than neutral information, p < .001. Experiment 2 (ongoing) determines whether children overcome their preference for sharing sensational information when the information is false. In this experiment, 4- and 5-year-olds are asked to select a book to teach a peer. Truth (true vs. false) and sensational character (sensational vs. neutral) of the books’ contents are independently varied. One book contains sensational information and the other neutral information about the same animal. After children’s preference for teaching one or the other book is recorded, they learn from an adult that one book’s content is true (“What’s inside this book is true”) and the other is not true (“What’s inside this book is not true”). We predict that children’s preference for teaching sensational information will be significantly reduced if they learn that the information is false.

Taken together, these experiments advance our understanding of children’s practices of information-sharing and what considerations drive children’s choices to spread certain kinds of information.

Authors

• Fanxiao Wani Qiu, University of Southern California
  Presenting Author

• Canan Ipek, University of Southern California

• Henrike Moll, University of Southern California