The Role of Temperament in Children's Selective Learning

• In Event: 16.024 - Learning From and Teaching Others: Individual Differences in Strategies Preschoolers Use to Learn and Teach

Abstract

Past research demonstrates that preschool children use at least two distinct strategies when selecting between informants who provide discordant information (Harris & Corriveau, 2011). First, children keep track of the accuracy of past statements. They prefer to pose questions to, and accept information from, informants whose statements converge with their own knowledge (e.g., Birch, Vauthier, & Bloom, 2008; Corriveau & Kurkul, 2014). Second, children use social identity (e.g., familiarity, accent, and facial appearance) when deciding whom to trust, and are more likely to endorse information provided by individuals similar to themselves (e.g., Kinzler, Corriveau, & Harris, 2011). To date, nearly all research on testimony has focused on group-level differences in judgment, leaving open the possibility that individual differences in personality might influence how children use social identity as a cue to trustworthiness, such as temperament.
Ninety-one two - to seven-year-olds participated. To assess temperament, parents filled out a modified Short Version of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ) (Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001), which included 25 questions focusing on widely accepted aspects of temperament (activity level, shyness, sociability, etc.) We also included a volume preference test. Research with adults indicates differing preferred levels of auditory stimulation by temperament (Green, 1984; Kagan, 1997). To explore children’s selective trust, children were presented with videos of two informants who differed in nonverbal characteristics consistent with temperament. Specifically, the introverted actor smiled with closed mouth, used minimal gestures, and spoke with few prosodic features. The extroverted actor smiled with an open mouth, gestured frequently, and spoke with more prosodic features. Adult ratings (N = 15) of the informants indicated no difference in friendliness, niceness, intelligence (all Fs > 1). The two actors provided labels for 4 unfamiliar objects and children decided which of the two informants they would like to ask for help, and subsequently, to endorse the label provided by one of the two informants. Finally, children were asked to judge which of the two informants was a ‘better’ teacher.
Children who scored more than one standard deviation above or below the mean on the surgency subscale of the CBQ were categorized as introverted (n = 19) and extroverted (n = 20). Analysis showed, as hypothesised, a positive correlation between surgency score and total volume preference (r(40) = .31, p = .49). To determine whether children's temperament influenced their preference for the two informants, we ran a multiple regression analysis on the number of times children chose the extroverted actor with Age, Surgency, and Total Volume Preference as predictors. The overall model was significant (F (3,36) = 8.271, p = .0). Both Surgency (Std. β = .405, SE = .005, p = .003) and Total Volume Preference (Std. β = .405, SE = .152, p = .004) were statistically significant predictors and accounted for 40.8% of the variance in children’s preference for the extroverted actor. We discuss implications of these findings for classroom practice as they relate to the level of classroom stimulation, and the relationship between the child and the classroom teacher.

Authors

• Lauren Blackwell, Boston University

• Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University