Trust, Maltreatment, and Socio-cognitive Abilities: Individual Differences in Children’s Acceptance of Conflicting Claims

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Previous studies have documented preschool-aged children’s sensitivity to the reliability of the informant (Koenig, Clément & Harris, 2004) as well as their access to information (Brosseau-Liard & Birch, 2011). Although children are selective about whom to trust, they sometimes readily accept information that contradicts their own perception or knowledge (e.g., Jaswal & Markman, 2007; Lane & Harris, 2014). What makes children more credulous, or more hesitant to trust information that contradicts their own thinking? The current study aims to examine how individual differences in parental maltreatment and social cognitive abilities affect children’s acceptance of contradicting claims.

The present study includes a sample of 164 3-year-olds and their mothers from low SES homes. The Maternal Interview on Child Maltreatment (MICM; Cicchetti, Toth, & Manly, 2003) was used to determine maltreatment status. 110 children were included in the maltreatment group because their mothers reported possible exposure to child neglect and maltreatment, and 54 had no history of child maltreatment. Children completed a tunnel game (adapted from Robinson & Whitcombe, 2003) which assessed children’s level of deference to a speaker’s claim. In this task, the child and an adult speaker could either see the content of the tunnel through the window, or feel the toy in the tunnel from the other end. Each child was presented with three-types of trials: Better-informed trials (children had better perceptual access than the speaker), Equally-informed trials (both parties had poor perceptual access), and Worse-informed trials (children had worse perceptual access than the speaker). When asked to determine which toy was in the tunnel, the speaker’s responses always contradicted the child’s responses, and the child was asked to make a final judgment in each trial. Children also completed the Silly Sounds Stroop Task (Gerstadt, Hong, & Diamond, 1994) to assess inhibitory control and mothers filled out a subscale of Children’s Social Understanding Scale (CSUS, Tahiroglu et al., 2014) exploring children’s social understanding of others’ knowledge access.

A linear mixed effects model was conducted with deference score as the dependent variable. Trial type, maltreatment status, their interaction, as well as CSUS and inhibitory control were entered as predictors. Random intercepts were included for participants to account for dependency among trials. Children’s responses in the tunnel game revealed a significant interaction between Maltreatment Status and Trial Type. Pairwise comparisons revealed a significant difference between the maltreated and non-maltreated group in the Better-informed trials, indicating that children who were at risk for maltreatment were more likely to revise their original judgment and defer to an adult, despite having better perceptual access than the speaker. We also found a significant main effect of inhibitory control, such that children with higher inhibitory control abilities were more likely to stick with their own judgments across the different types of trials. The CSUS was not predictive of children’s level of deference. Taken together, these results revealed that children who were at risk for maltreatment were more likely to defer to conflicting claims made by adults even when they were better informed, indicating that they might be more prone to unchecked suggestibility.

Authors

• Pearl Han Li, Duke Univeristy
  Presenting Author

• Annelise Pesch, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Katherine Ridge, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dante Cicchetti, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melissa A. Koenig, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  Non-Presenting Author

• Fred A Rogosch, University of Rochester
  Non-Presenting Author