Children’s reasoning about whether other people should test what they are told

• In Event: Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Objective: Recent work investigating whether young children seek first-hand information following surprising but testable claims has revealed that when 3- to 5-year-old children are presented with a surprising claim that is easy to test—that a rock is soft—they explore the surprising property of the rock when left alone (Cottrell et al., 2020). However, when presented with the surprising claim that a much smaller object is heavier that a larger one, 3- to 5-year-old children sometimes pick up the smaller object or the larger object but do not actively test the truth of the claim by, for instance, picking up the smaller and the bigger object at the same time to compare their weight—a behavior that older children do display (Ronfard et al., 2018). There are two (non-exclusive) explanations for this age-related difference. Hypothesis 1: younger children struggle to investigate claims that require a comparison between two objects. Hypothesis 2: at around 6-years of age, children begin to realize that claims can be empirically tested.

General Implications: This study will clarify when children begin to incorporate empirical testing into their evaluation of what they are told.

Method: Children between 4- and 7-years of age will be presented with short stories in which an adult tells a child a surprising claim that is either easy to assess, “the smallest object is very heavy”, or more difficult, “the smallest object is heavier than all of the other ones” (Figure 1). Children are then asked three questions about what the child should do when left alone: What do you think the child should do now? How do you think the child should do that? Why do you think the child should do that?

Participants: We will test 112 children between 4- and 7-years-old, 80% power at alpha = .05 to detect an Odds Ratio of 1.62.

Coding: Two codes: (1) Whether children propose a pattern of exploration that could provide evidence for assessing E’s claim, e.g., “pick up the small doll and the big doll” vs “touch the doll”; (2) Whether in their explanation for seeking that evidence children mention its relevance for testing E’s claim, e.g., “to see if the smallest is really the heaviest” vs. “because it’s fun”.

Analyses: Two logistic regressions, one for each dependent measure: (1) the pattern of exploration suggested provides evidence for assessing E’s claim; (2) the suggested analysis is meant to test the truth of E’s claim. For both analyses, the predictors are Age (continuous) and Type of Set-Up (single object vs. multiple object).

Hypothesis (1) predicts an interaction between Age and Type of Set-Up (single object vs. multiple object) with an age change being found for multiple object tasks but not for single object tasks.

Hypothesis (2) predicts that older children are more likely to mention exploration as a means of testing E’s claim.

Feasibility: Barring unforeseen obstacles, this study will be completed by the time of the meeting. We have already collected data from 24 out of 112 participants.

Authors

• Samantha Cottrell, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Paul Harris, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Samuel Ronfard, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author