Little Epistemologists: Development and Individual Differences in Children’s Epistemological Understanding

• In Event: 3-183 - When is Knowledge Justified? Investigating Children’s Epistemic Understanding

Integrative Statement

Epistemological understanding (EU)—that is, one’s beliefs and reasoning about the nature and justification of knowledge—has important implications for critical thinking in formal and informal learning contexts (CCSSO, 2010; Greene, Sandoval, & Bråten, 2016). Children’s EU is described absolutist--that is, their theory of knowledge holds that it is simple, certain, and objectively true (Kuhn, et al., 2000). However, recent work on individual differences in children’s social learning calls this into question, pointing to parent EU as a predictor of children’s’ diverse epistemological judgments. For example, parents’ EU predicts children’s emphasis on evidence in scientific conversations (Luce, et al., 2013), as well as evaluations of reasoners’ competence (Suárez & Koenig 2015; 2016). Here we ask: 1) how mature and varied might children’s EU be across various judgment domains; 2) whether parental EU might predict children’s; and 3) whether children’s EU predicts individual variations in social learning.
Fifty-three 6- and 7-year-olds saw 3 vignettes in which two characters disagreed about an issue with no clear answer or resolution. The issues represented were one resolvable question of fact (“Objective”; e.g. whether there are dark clouds outside), one issue of interpretation (“Mixed”; e.g. whether an exotic animal makes for a good pet), and one potentially unresolvable matter of taste (“Subjective”; e.g. whether a painting is pretty) as indicated by adult ratings. For each vignette children answered questions concerning the cause of the disagreement, how it might be resolved, and whether there could be truth to both claims. Children’s body of responses were coded as absolutist (A), evaluativist (E) or multiplist (M) based on whether they recognized that knowing involved objective fact, subjective interpretation, or both.
As a group, children adjusted their epistemological stance based on the vignette: chi squared tests indicated that absolutism was significantly more prevalent in the objective domain, multiplism was most common in the subjective domain, and evaluativism in the mixed domain, ps <0.05. Notably, nearly 40% of children held evaluativist perspectives in the subjective domain, despite work indicating that even adults struggle to acknowledge how matters of taste can be evaluated based on some objective criteria (e.g. judging music based on pitch; Kuhn, et al. 2000).
Children’s evaluations of reasoners lend further support to the idea that they employ their EU to learn from and about others: children’s tendency to make multiplist judgments was significantly correlated with their tendency to say that both an evidence-based reasoner and an overconfident speaker have “the best way of thinking”, r= - 0.26, p<0.05.
Finally, parents’ own EU was predictive of their childrens’ even after controlling for children’s verbal IQ: children’s tendency to make evaluativist judgments was negatively related to parents’ absolutist judgments, rp= - 0.25, p<0.05.
These findings indicate that children are not strict objectivists. Rather, there is considerable inter- and intra-individual variation in their philosophies of knowledge, which are reflective of both context and parents’ epistemological values. Furthermore, EU has important implications for children’s social learning, particularly when evaluating others’ use of evidence to justify claims.

Authors

• Sarah Suarez, University of Minnesota
  Presenting Author

• Melissa A Koenig, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author