Learning From Explanations: Socioeconomic Differences in How Children Use Explanations to Learn From Others

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

Abstract

Recent work on children’s selective learning has largely focused on how children use an informant’s accurate or inaccurate labeling of a familiar object when subsequently deciding from whom to learn a novel fact (e.g., Birch, Vauthier & Bloom, 2008; Koenig & Harris, 2005). This focus on children’s evaluation of single-word utterances is surprising, given that preschoolers shift from primarily asking ‘what’ and ‘where’ questions, which can be answered with one-word responses, to asking ‘why” and “how’ questions, which require longer explanations (Chouinard, 2007). Although several recent studies have found that children monitor explanation quality when making judgements about an informant’s future credibility (Authors, 2014; 2015; Mercier, Bernard & Clement, 2014); it is unclear if children’s preferences are the same for all groups. Indeed, in a recent study we found that children from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds had different preferences when informants used the passive voice in their explanations (Authors, 2015). Given this finding, in the current set of studies we explored individual differences in children’s use of explanation quality (marked by explanation circularity) based on socioeconomic status.
Thirty-two 5-year-olds (M = 5; 3, 18 female) participated in Study 1 and 34, 5-year-olds (M = 5; 5, 16 female) participated in Study 2. Half of the children came from low-SES backgrounds while the other half came from mid-SES families. There were 3 phases in Study 1 and 4 phases in Study 2: (1a) picture descriptive task (Experiment 2 only) (2) training (3) novel explanations (4) novel labels. In a training phase, two informants provided explanations for 4 familiar entities (e.g., rain). One informant consistently provided a non-circular explanation (“It rains because the clouds fill with water and get too heavy”) whereas the other informant provided a circular explanation (“It rains because water falls from the sky and gets us wet”). Children were asked to endorse one of the two explanations. Whereas mid-SES children selectively preferred the non-circular explanations (t(15) = 6.26, p < .001, d= 1.56) low-SES children demonstrated a selective preference for the circular explanations (t(15) = 3.21, p < .05, d = .68). This preference held in Study 2, even when controlling for vocabulary level.
In a test phase, we asked whether children’s preferences led to inferences about the future credibility of the informants. The two informants provided conflicting non-circular explanations and labels for novel objects. Across both studies, mid-SES children demonstrated a preference for learning from the non-circular informant whereas the low-SES children preferred to learn from the circular informant.
Despite previous findings, these results indicate that not ALL children prefer to learn from an informant who uses non-circular explanations. Indeed, children from low-SES families not only prefer circular explanations, but prefer to learn from an informant who had previously used circular explanations. We hypothesize that this difference is likely due to individual differences in parent-child speech. We discuss these hypotheses along with the implications for these findings in the second presentation of this symposium.

Authors

• Katelyn E. Kurkul, Merrimack College

• Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University