Epistemological Understanding in Action: Children’s Evaluations of Reasoners and Reasons

• In Event: 2-140 - Social mechanisms of selective trust and selective learning in childhood: New evidence and implications

Integrative Statement

Savvy learners avoid placing trust in confident speakers who are poorly calibrated—that is, speakers whose certainty is not aligned with evidence or reason. Compared to adults, children struggle to use informant calibration as a cue for social learning (Tenney et al., 2011). However,
recent work on individual differences in children’s social learning indicates that at least some children avoid learning from speakers who fail to competently reason about evidence (Suárez & Koenig, 2018). Notably, their parents were likely to have an evaluativist epistemology—their personal theory of knowledge values interpretation of evidence to construct and justify belief. Here we ask: (1) whether children use speaker calibration and justifications as a cue for learning relate to parents’ epistemological judgments; and (2) if their own explicit epistemological judgments relate to their evaluations of speaker calibration.
In Experiment 1, 61 4- to 8-year-olds watched 5 video clips in which a demonstrator placed a set of blocks onto a box for two speakers. Each set featured a unique proportion of blocks (from 0% - 100%) that made the box light up. For each trial, speakers predicted whether a 5th block would be effective. The Evidence-Based Calibrator adjusted the certainty of her predictions in accordance with the statistical evidence (“very sure”, “kind of sure”, “just not so sure”) and cited evidence as a justification for her certainty or lack thereof in objective terms (“because of the blocks I saw”). In contrast, the Overconfident speaker reported high certainty (“very sure”) regardless of the evidence justified by subjective experiences (“because I have a very good feeling about it”). Children with absolutist parents—who see knowledge as fixed and objective—were more likely to credit the Evidence-Based Calibrator with the “best way of thinking”, p < .05. Similarly, children whose parents had multiplist epistemologies—seeing knowledge as subjective—were more likely to say that the Intuitive Overconfident speaker had “the best way of thinking”, p < .05.
In Experiment 2, 54 6- and 7-year-olds also observed speakers who varied in calibration as in Experiment 1 (but offered no justifications). To assess their epistemological understanding, they read 3 vignettes in which two characters disagreed about an issue with no clear resolution. These were one potentially resolvable question of fact (e.g. whether it’s raining outside), one issue of interpretation (e.g. whether an exotic animal makes a good pet), and one potentially unresolvable matter of taste (e.g. whether a painting is pretty). 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, evaluativist or multiplist based on whether they recognized that knowing involved objective fact, subjective interpretation, or both. Interestingly, children’s multiplist judgments were correlated with their crediting both reasoners with “having the best way of thinking” and “know most”, p-values < .05.
Importantly, these results suggest that (1) children’s diverse epistemological beliefs are reflective of their parents’; and (2) employed in their evaluations of speaker competence and expertise.

Authors

• Sarah Suarez, University of Minnesota
  Presenting Author

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