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.

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.

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.

The development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior: Protocol for Wave 1 data collection with children and parents by the Developing Belief Network.

The Developing Belief Network is a consortium of researchers studying human development in diverse social-cultural settings, with a focus on the interplay between general cognitive development and culturally specific processes of socialization and cultural transmission in early and middle childhood. The current manuscript describes the study protocol for the network's first wave of data collection, which aims to explore the development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior. This work is guided by three key research questions: (1) How do children represent and reason about religious and supernatural agents? (2) How do children represent and reason about religion as an aspect of social identity? (3) How are religious and supernatural beliefs transmitted within and between generations? The protocol is designed to address these questions via a set of nine tasks for children between the ages of 4 and 10 years, a comprehensive survey completed by their parents/caregivers, and a task designed to elicit conversations between children and caregivers. This study is being conducted in 39 distinct cultural-religious groups (to date), spanning 17 countries and 13 languages. In this manuscript, we provide detailed descriptions of all elements of this study protocol, give a brief overview of the ways in which this protocol has been adapted for use in diverse religious communities, and present the final, English-language study materials for 6 of the 39 cultural-religious groups who are currently being recruited for this study: Protestant Americans, Catholic Americans, American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, and religiously unaffiliated Americans.