The role of accuracy in children's judgments of experts' knowledge.

Across two studies, children ages 6-9 (N = 160, 82 boys, 78 girls; 75% White, 91% non-Hispanic) rated an inaccurate expert's knowledge and provided explanations for the expert's inaccurate statements. In Study 1, children's knowledge ratings decreased as he provided more inaccurate information. Ratings were predicted by age (i.e., older children gave lower ratings than younger children) and how children explained the error. Children's ratings followed similar patterns in Study 2. However, children delegated new questions to the inaccurate expert, even after rating him as having little to no knowledge. These results suggest that 6- to 9-year-olds weigh accuracy over expertise when making epistemic judgments, but, when they need assistance, they will still seek out information from a previously inaccurate expert.

Can touchscreens replace teachers? Chinese children's character learning from a touchscreen-based app, video, or face-to-face instruction.

Given the increasing prevalence of touchscreen devices that are intended for educational purposes, this study explored children's transfer of learning from touchscreen media compared with video and offline face-to-face learning. A total of 76 5- and 6-year-old Chinese kindergarten children (M = 68.21 months, SD = 3.57, range = 62-76; 30 boys and 46 girls) were randomly assigned to learn eight Chinese characters using a touchscreen-based app, using a video, or through face-to-face interaction. Learning was measured via the recall task scores, recognition task scores, recall efficiency, and recognition efficiency. The results revealed that children's recall and recognition task scores improved when learning took place using the touchscreen or face-to-face interaction. Children's recall efficiency and recognition efficiency were strongest in the face-to-face condition, followed by the touchscreen condition and then the video condition. The effects of instructional format on children's recall and recognition scores and recall efficiency were moderated by age; younger children's recall and recognition scores in the face-to-face condition and the touchscreen condition were significantly higher than in the video condition, yet older children's recall and recognition scores did not differ between conditions. However, for recall efficiency, younger children's recall efficiency in the face-to-face condition and the touchscreen condition was significantly higher than in the video condition; older children's recall efficiency in the face-to-face condition was higher than in both the touchscreen condition and the video condition. In conclusion, both face-to-face interaction and a touchscreen-based app were helpful ways for children to learn Chinese characters compared with video, but face-to-face learning showed advantages over touchscreen learning in recall efficiency for older children.

The role of truth and bias in parents' judgments of children's science interests.

Parents' judgments about their children's level of interest in different science topics may affect the science-learning opportunities they provide their children. However, little is known about how parents judge these interests. We used the truth and bias model of judgment of West and Kenny (Psychological Review [2011], Vol. 118, pp. 357-378) to examine factors that may affect parents' judgments of their children's science interests such as the truth (children's self-reported interest) and potential sources of parental bias. We also investigated whether several individual difference measures moderated the effect of truth or bias on judgments. Children (N = 139, ages 7-11 years) rated their level of interest in five science and five non-science topics. Separately, parents (N = 139) judged their children's interest in the same topics. Overall, parents accurately judged their children's science interests, but we also found evidence of some forms of bias, namely that parents generally under-estimated their children's science interests. In addition, parents' personal science attitudes were related to judgments of science interests, such that parents more favorable of science tended to rate their children's interest in science topics higher than parents with a less favorable view. We did not find evidence that individual differences among parents moderated the effect of truth or bias on judgments; however, parents were more accurate at judging the non-science interests of older children than younger children. Parents should be aware that they may be under-estimating their children's interest in science topics and that their personal attitudes about science may be influencing their judgments of their children's science interests.

Children's interactions with virtual assistants: Moving beyond depictions of social agents.

Clark and Fischer argue that people see social robots as depictions of social agents. However, people's interactions with virtual assistants may change their beliefs about social robots. Children and adults with exposure to virtual assistants may view social robots not as depictions of social agents, but as social agents belonging to a unique ontological category.

"Why do dogs pant?": Characteristics of parental explanations about science predict children's knowledge.

Using a new method for examining parental explanations in a laboratory setting, the prompted explanation task, this study examines how characteristics of parental explanations about biology relate to children's knowledge. Parents (N = 148; Mage  = 38; 84% female, 16% male; 67% having completed college) of children ages 7-10 (Mage  = 8.92; 47% female, 53% male; 58% White, 9.5% Black, 9.5% Asian) provided answers to eight how and why questions about biology. Parents used a number of different approaches to address the questions, including providing more mechanistic responses to how questions and more teleological responses to why questions. The characteristics of parental explanations-most notably, how frequently parents provided correct responses-predicted children's performance on measures of verbal intelligence and biological knowledge. Additional exploratory analyses and implications for children's learning are discussed.

Mind the gap: How incomplete explanations influence children's interest and learning behaviors.

Children rely on others' explanations to learn scientific concepts, yet sometimes the explanations they receive are incomplete. Three studies explore how receiving incomplete or complete explanations influences children's subsequent interest and engagement in learning behaviors to obtain additional information about a topic. Children ages 7-10 (N = 275; 49% female, 51% male; 55% white) viewed question-and-answer exchanges about animal behaviors that included either a complete causal explanation of the behavior or an explanation that was missing a key step. Children rated how knowledgeable they felt after hearing the explanation (Study 1) or how much information was missing from the explanation (Studies 2 and 3) and reported how interested they were in learning more about the topic. They also completed two measures of learning behaviors: a book choice task (all studies) and a card choice task (Studies 1 and 2). In the book choice task, children opted to learn about the topics of the incomplete explanations more frequently than the topics of the complete explanations. However, there was no evidence of selective learning behaviors in the card choice task and children's self-reported interest in learning more about each animal behavior was not directly related to the type of explanation they had received. Individual differences in children's interest and learning behaviors were linked to verbal intelligence and domain-specific biological knowledge. Implications for the information-gap theory of learning and children's learning in multiple contexts are discussed.

Unsafe to eat? How familiar cartoon characters affect children's learning about potentially harmful foods.

Young children learn about the properties of foods, such as taste and healthiness, from others. By using selective trust tasks in which a familiar cartoon character and an unfamiliar informant provided different testimony about food safety, this study examined how an informant's familiarity affected 4- to 6-year-old children's selective social learning about food safety. In Experiment 1, when judging the safety of foods from the familiar cartoon character and the unfamiliar character, children across all age groups showed a preference for asking the familiar character for information. For endorse questions, 4- and 5-year-olds did not consistently accept or reject either character's statements, while 6-year-olds endorsed the unfamiliar cartoon character's statements more often than the familiar character's statements. In Experiment 2, when the unfamiliar informant was a real adult instead of a fictional cartoon character, children sought out information from the familiar character more often than from the adult, and they did not differentially endorse statements by either informant. Moreover, children who had less advanced theory of mind skills and who viewed cartoon characters as more real were more likely to ask the cartoon character. These results suggest that although children prefer to obtain information from familiar characters, they accept information about food safety from multiple kinds of sources and their social-cognitive skills play a role in their decisions.

The role of epistemic and social characteristics in children's selective trust: Three meta-analyses.

Over the last 15 years, researchers have been increasingly interested in understanding the nature and development of children's selective trust. Three meta-analyses were conducted on a total of 51 unique studies (88 experiments) to provide a quantitative overview of 3- to 6-year-old children's selective trust in an informant based on the informant's epistemic or social characteristics, and to examine the relation between age and children's selective trust decisions. The first and second meta-analyses found that children displayed medium-to-large pooled effects in favor of trusting the informant who was knowledgeable or the informant with positive social characteristics. Moderator analyses revealed that 4-year-olds were more likely to endorse knowledgeable informants than 3-year-olds. The third meta-analysis examined cases where two informants simultaneously differed in their epistemic and social characteristics. The results revealed that 3-year-old children did not selectively endorse informants who were more knowledgeable but had negative social characteristics over informants who were less knowledgeable but had positive social characteristics. However, 4- to 6-year-olds consistently prioritized epistemic cues over social characteristics when deciding who to trust. Together, these meta-analyses suggest that epistemic and social characteristics are both valuable to children when they evaluate the reliability of informants. Moreover, with age, children place greater value on epistemic characteristics when deciding whether to endorse an informant's testimony. Implications for the development of epistemic trust and the design of studies of children's selective trust are discussed.

Children's belief in purported events: When claims reference hearsay, books, or the internet.

Children aged 4.75-8.50 years (n = 127) heard testimony about improbable or impossible events-referencing either spoken hearsay, a book, or the internet-and judged whether the events could occur in reality. A separate baseline group (n = 48) judged the events without hearing testimony. Relative to baseline, younger children (4 and 5 years) reported greater belief that improbable events could occur when testimony referenced hearsay and less belief when testimony referenced the internet. In contrast, older children (8 years) were less likely to believe improbable events could occur when testimony referenced hearsay and believed testimony that referenced a text-based source (a book or the internet) at rates similar to baseline. Beliefs about the occurrence of impossible events were similar (and low) across ages and testimony conditions. Implications for children's learning from spoken and text-based sources are discussed.

Intelligence and Neurophysiological Markers of Error Monitoring Relate to Children's Intellectual Humility.

This study explored developmental and individual differences in intellectual humility (IH) among 127 children ages 6-8. IH was operationalized as children's assessment of their knowledge and willingness to delegate scientific questions to experts. Children completed measures of IH, theory of mind, motivational framework, and intelligence, and neurophysiological measures indexing early (error-related negativity [ERN]) and later (error positivity [Pe]) error-monitoring processes related to cognitive control. Children's knowledge self-assessment correlated with question delegation, and older children showed greater IH than younger children. Greater IH was associated with higher intelligence but not with social cognition or motivational framework. ERN related to self-assessment, whereas Pe related to question delegation. Thus, children show separable epistemic and social components of IH that may differentially contribute to metacognition and learning.

What does Mickey Mouse know about food? Children's trust in favorite characters versus experts.

Children receive information from multiple sources, including people who are more or less knowledgeable and more or less familiar. In some cases, children also encounter messages from fictional characters who vary across these dimensions. Two studies investigated children's trust in a familiar animal character versus a human expert when hearing conflicting information about items related to or unrelated to the expert's knowledge. In Study 1, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (N = 60) heard conflicting labels for unfamiliar fruits and tools from a familiar character and an unfamiliar fruit expert. They then identified which informant was correct and from whom they would seek out new information. Overall, children endorsed the fictional character's statements over the fruit expert's statements. Younger children preferred to seek out new information from the character, whereas 5-year-olds preferred the expert. In Study 2, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (N = 60) heard similar conflicting objective statements about fruits and tools and heard conflicting subjective statements about unknown foods. The 4- and 5-year-olds trusted the fruit expert's objective statements about fruit and did not consistently endorse either informant's objective statements about tools, but they endorsed either informant when hearing subjective statements about unknown foods. Children also endorsed positive statements (e.g., that the food tastes good) regardless of the source. Taken together, these results suggest that when children decide who to trust, they consider both familiarity and relevant expertise and they weigh each factor differently depending on what kind of judgment is being made.

Ultrasociality and the division of cognitive labor.

Gowdy & Krall describe the development of ultrasociality in terms of economics and the division of labor. We propose that the division of cognitive labor allows humans to behave in an ultrasocial manner without the radical evolutionary changes that are experienced by other species, suggesting that species may traverse different paths to achieve ultrasociality.

How familiar characters influence children's judgments about information and products.

Children are exposed to advertisements and products that incorporate familiar characters, such as Dora the Explorer and Bob the Builder, virtually from birth. How does the presence of these characters influence children's judgments about information and products? Three experiments (N=125) explored how 4-year-olds evaluate messages from familiar characters and how their trust in a familiar character's testimony relates to their product preferences. Children endorsed objective and subjective claims made by a familiar character more often than those made by a perceptually similar but unfamiliar character even in situations where they had evidence that the familiar character was unreliable. Children also preferred low-quality products bearing a familiar character's image over high-quality products without a character image up to 74% of the time (whereas control groups preferred the low-quality products less than 6% of the time when they did not include a character image). These findings suggest that young children are powerfully influenced by familiar characters encountered in the media, leaving them vulnerable to advertising messages and clouding their judgments about products.

Owning up to the role of historical information.

Although the inherence heuristic is a versatile cognitive process that addresses a wide range of psychological phenomena, we propose that ownership information represents an important test case for evaluating both the boundaries of Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) model (e.g., is the inherence heuristic meaningfully limited to only inherent factors?) and its effectiveness as a mechanism for explaining psychological essentialism.

How does Google get its information?: Children's judgements about Google search.

Children frequently use Google to answer their questions, yet what they think about Google's capacity and limitations is unclear. This study explores children's beliefs about Google's capacity to answer questions. American children ages 9 and 10 (n = 44; 18 boys and 26 girls) viewed factual questions directed towards Google or a person. After viewing each question, they reported their confidence in the informant's accuracy, the time it would take the informant to obtain the answer and how the informant would obtain the answer. Finally, they generated questions that the internet would be capable or incapable of answering. Children believed Google would be more accurate and faster than a person at answering questions. Children consistently generated appropriate questions that the internet would be good at answering, but they sometimes struggled to generate questions that the internet would not be good at answering. Implications for children's learning are discussed.

Little pitchers use their big ears: preschoolers solve problems by listening to others ask questions.

Children ask questions and learn from the responses they receive; however, little is known about how children learn from listening to others ask questions. Five experiments examined preschoolers' (N = 179) ability to solve simple problems using information gathered from listening to question-and-answer exchanges between 2 parties present in the same room. Overall, the ability to efficiently use information gathered from overheard exchanges improved between ages 3 and 5. Critically, however, across ages children solved the majority of problems correctly, suggesting preschoolers are capable of learning from others' questions. Moreover, children learned from others' questions without explicit instruction and when engaged in another activity. Implications for the development of problem-solving skills are discussed.

When the internet is wrong: Children's trust in an inaccurate internet or human source.

Prior studies have shown that children can select and evaluate information based on the previous accuracy of an informant. The current study examines how 5- to 6-year-old kindergarteners (N = 46) and 7- to 8-year-old second-graders (N = 48) in China judge scientific information provided by the internet or a teacher, and how a source's history of inaccuracy influences participants' judgments. When lacking explicit information about previous accuracy, neither younger children nor older children showed differential trust in the internet or a teacher. After observing the internet providing inaccurate information, children in both age groups decreased their trust in statements from the internet. When the teacher was consistently inaccurate, children in both age groups also showed reduced preference for the teacher's statements. These findings demonstrate that 5- to 8-year-old children take into account history of inaccuracy when deciding whether to request or endorse information from the internet or a teacher.

Children's trust in and learning from voice assistants.

As children increasingly interact with digital voice assistants, it is important to know whether they treat these devices as reliable information sources. Two studies investigated children's trust in and recall of statements made by a novel voice assistant and a human informant. In Study 1, children ages 4-5 (Mage = 5.05; 20 boys, 20 girls) and 7-8 (Mage = 7.98; 18 boys, 22 girls) from predominately White, upper middle-class families heard each informant respond to questions from multiple categories. With increasing age, children showed greater trust in the voice assistant for factual information and greater trust in the human for personal information about the experimenter identified as her friend. Endorsement of each informant's statements also predicted later recall. In Study 2, children ages 4-5 (Mage = 5.00; 20 boys, 20 girls) and 7-8 (Mage = 8.03; 19 boys, 21 girls) from predominately White, upper middle-class families chose whether to seek out information from a voice assistant or human informant. With increasing age, children showed an increasing preference to seek factual information from the voice assistant and an increasing preference to seek personal information from the human. Additionally, children's preferences were not related to attributions of epistemic capacities to each informant nor the presence of a voice assistant in children's homes. These results suggest that children's trust in voice assistants varies with age and depends on the type of information involved. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Cognitive reflection and authoritarianism relate to how parents respond to children's science questions.

When children ask questions about science, parents use a variety of strategies to answer them, including providing accurate information, connecting to prior knowledge, or simply saying "I do not know." This study examines the factors underlying individual differences in parental explanatory characteristics. Parents (N = 148; Mage = 38; 84% female, 16% male; 58% with White American children; 67% having completed college; 49% with household income over $75,000) of children ages 7 to 10 answered eight questions about biology as if they were responding to their child. They also completed three measures of different aspects of reasoning and values: the Picture Vocabulary Test (PVT) to measure verbal intelligence (Gershon et al., 2013), the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Toplak et al., 2014), which measures the tendency to override intuitive but incorrect responses to engage in reflective thinking, and the Authoritarianism Scale (Feldman & Stenner, 1997), which measures a parent's preference for encouraging obedience toward authority figures over encouraging their child's autonomy. Our findings support that different factors are associated with different explanatory characteristics. Parents high in reflective thinking tend to provide more connections to other knowledge in their explanations, while parents high in authoritarianism tend to provide fewer references to uncertainty and how to manage it. Implications for effective parent-child communication and children's scientific understanding will be discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's selective information sharing based on the recipient's role.

Two experiments investigate whether children ages 5 through 10 (n = 121) take into account an individual's role when choosing what information to share or with whom to share it. In Experiment 1, children heard statements about an unfamiliar animal's behavior and appearance. They then chose one statement to share with each of two characters with different job descriptions. Seven-year-olds consistently shared the information that aligned with each character's role, but 5-year-olds and a subset of 9-year-olds did not. Experiment 2 showed that children's decisions about what to share were not driven by their personal preferences for the information they were sharing. In addition, when children were provided with a single fact and had to choose with whom to share it, 7- and 9-year-olds shared information with the recipient for whom it was most relevant. Together, the findings suggest that by age 7, children can use information about an individual's occupational role in order to infer what information to share.