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73
Adults don't always know best: Preschoolers use past reliability over age when learning new words
- Psychological Science
, 2006
"... Children learn much of what they know—from words to their birth dates to the fact that the earth is round—from what other people tell them. But some people are better informants than others. One way children can estimate the credibility of a speaker is by evaluating how reliable that person has been ..."
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Cited by 52 (1 self)
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Children learn much of what they know—from words to their birth dates to the fact that the earth is round—from what other people tell them. But some people are better informants than others. One way children can estimate the credibility of a speaker is by evaluating how reliable that person has been in the past. Even preschoolers prefer learning new words from an adult who has previously labeled objects correctly rather than one who has labeled objects incorrectly (Koenig, Clement, & Harris, 2004). Children may also make predictions about a speaker on the basis of that person’s membership in a particular group. For example, 4-year-olds expect that an unfamiliar adult, but not necessarily an unfamiliar child, knows the meaning of the word hypochondriac (Taylor, Cartwright, & Bowden, 1991). Which of these two cues to a speaker’s credibility—reliability or age—do 3- and 4-year-old children find more compelling?
Preschoolers monitor the relative accuracy of informants
- Developmental Psychology
, 2007
"... In 2 studies, the sensitivity of 3- and 4-year-olds to the previous accuracy of informants was assessed. Children viewed films in which 2 informants labeled familiar objects with differential accuracy (across the 2 experiments, children were exposed to the following rates of accuracy by the more and ..."
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Cited by 39 (8 self)
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In 2 studies, the sensitivity of 3- and 4-year-olds to the previous accuracy of informants was assessed. Children viewed films in which 2 informants labeled familiar objects with differential accuracy (across the 2 experiments, children were exposed to the following rates of accuracy by the more and less accurate informants, respectively: 100 % vs. 0%, 100 % vs. 25%, 75 % vs. 0%, and 75 % vs. 25%). Next, children watched films in which the same 2 informants provided conflicting novel labels for unfamiliar objects. Children were asked to indicate which of the 2 labels was associated with each object. Three-year-olds trusted the more accurate informant only in conditions in which 1 of the 2 informants had been 100% accurate, whereas 4-year-olds trusted the more accurate informant in all conditions tested. These results suggest that 3-year-olds mistrust informants who make a single error, whereas 4-year-olds track the relative frequency of errors when deciding whom to trust.
The Moral, Epistemic, and Mindreading Components of Children’s Vigilance Towards Deception.
- Cognition,
, 2009
"... a b s t r a c t Vigilance towards deception is investigated in 3-to-5-year-old children: (i) In Study 1, children as young as 3 years of age prefer the testimony of a benevolent rather than of a malevolent communicator. (ii) In Study 2, only at the age of four do children show understanding of the ..."
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Cited by 21 (1 self)
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a b s t r a c t Vigilance towards deception is investigated in 3-to-5-year-old children: (i) In Study 1, children as young as 3 years of age prefer the testimony of a benevolent rather than of a malevolent communicator. (ii) In Study 2, only at the age of four do children show understanding of the falsity of a lie uttered by a communicator described as a liar. (iii) In Study 3, the ability to recognize a lie when the communicator is described as intending to deceive the child emerges around four and improves throughout the fifth and sixth year of life. On the basis of this evidence, we suggest that preference for the testimony of a benevolent communicator, understanding of the epistemic aspects of deception, and understanding of its intentional aspects are three functionally and developmentally distinct components of epistemic vigilance.
The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery
- Cognition
, 2011
"... a b s t r a c t Motivated by computational analyses, we look at how teaching affects exploration and discovery. In Experiment 1, we investigated children's exploratory play after an adult pedagogically demonstrated a function of a toy, after an interrupted pedagogical demonstration, after a na ..."
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Cited by 15 (5 self)
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a b s t r a c t Motivated by computational analyses, we look at how teaching affects exploration and discovery. In Experiment 1, we investigated children's exploratory play after an adult pedagogically demonstrated a function of a toy, after an interrupted pedagogical demonstration, after a naïve adult demonstrated the function, and at baseline. Preschoolers in the pedagogical condition focused almost exclusively on the target function; by contrast, children in the other conditions explored broadly. In Experiment 2, we show that children restrict their exploration both after direct instruction to themselves and after overhearing direct instruction given to another child; they do not show this constraint after observing direct instruction given to an adult or after observing a non-pedagogical intentional action. We discuss these findings as the result of rational inductive biases. In pedagogical contexts, a teacher's failure to provide evidence for additional functions provides evidence for their absence; such contexts generalize from child to child (because children are likely to have comparable states of knowledge) but not from adult to child. Thus, pedagogy promotes efficient learning but at a cost: children are less likely to perform potentially irrelevant actions but also less likely to discover novel information. Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V. The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done -men who are creative, inventive and discoverers. Jean Piaget.
Children monitor individuals’ expertise for word learning,”
- Child Development,
, 2010
"... Two experiments examined preschoolers' ability to learn novel words using others' expertise about objects' nonobvious properties. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds (n = 24) endorsed individuals' labels for objects based on their differing causal knowledge about those objects. Experim ..."
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Cited by 11 (0 self)
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Two experiments examined preschoolers' ability to learn novel words using others' expertise about objects' nonobvious properties. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds (n = 24) endorsed individuals' labels for objects based on their differing causal knowledge about those objects. Experiment 2 examined the robustness of this inference and its development. Four-year-olds (n = 40) endorsed labels from confederates who accurately predicted objects' nonobvious internal properties but not nonobvious external properties. Three-year-olds (n = 40) performed at chance levels in both cases and were less likely to recognize the informants' expertise, suggesting that they might be unable to monitor individuals' expertise. These data suggest that children's ability to learn from testimony is necessary for their understanding of the relevance of an individual's expertise.
The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Modeling the effect of pedagogical contexts on preschoolers’ exploratory play
- In: Proceedings of the Thirty-first Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
, 2009
"... How does explicit instruction affect exploratory play and learning? We present a model that captures pedagogical assumptions (adapted from Shafto and Goodman, 2008) and test the model with a novel experiment looking at 4-year-olds ’ exploratory play in pedagogical and non-pedagogical contexts. Our f ..."
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Cited by 10 (4 self)
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How does explicit instruction affect exploratory play and learning? We present a model that captures pedagogical assumptions (adapted from Shafto and Goodman, 2008) and test the model with a novel experiment looking at 4-year-olds ’ exploratory play in pedagogical and non-pedagogical contexts. Our findings are consistent with the model predictions: preschool children limit their exploration in pedagogical contexts, spending most of their free play performing only the demonstrated action. By contrast, children explore broadly both at baseline and after an accidental demonstration. Thus pedagogy constrains children’s exploration for better and for worse; children learn the demonstrated causal relationship but are less likely than children in non-pedagogical contexts to discover and learn other causal relationships.
Questions of pedagogy
- State Unilversity of New York
, 1993
"... This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or sel ..."
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Cited by 7 (0 self)
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This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier’s archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit:
Children’s working understanding of the knowledge gained from seeing and feeling
- Developmental Science
, 2008
"... Working understanding of knowledge sources ..."
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Preschoolers (sometimes) defer to the majority in making simple perceptual judgments
- Developmental Psychology
, 2010
"... Three- and 4-year-old children were asked to judge which of a set of 3 lines was the longest, both independently and in the face of an inaccurate consensus among adult informants. Children were invariably accurate when making independent judgments but sometimes deferred to the inaccurate consensus. ..."
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Cited by 6 (0 self)
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Three- and 4-year-old children were asked to judge which of a set of 3 lines was the longest, both independently and in the face of an inaccurate consensus among adult informants. Children were invariably accurate when making independent judgments but sometimes deferred to the inaccurate consensus. Nevertheless, the deference displayed by both age groups proved to be circumscribed. When asked to solve a practical problem—selecting the longest strip to build an adequate bridge—both groups relied on their own perceptual judgment, regardless of whether they had deferred to the inaccurate consensus. Confirming earlier meta-analytic findings with adults, the rate of deference was greater among Asian American children as compared with Caucasian American children.
Preschoolers' Perspective Taking in Word Learning: Do They Blindly Follow Eye Gaze
- Psychological Science
, 2008
"... ABSTRACT—When learning new words, do children use a speaker’s eye gaze because it reveals referential intent? We conducted two experiments that addressed this ques-tion. In Experiment 1, the experimenter left while two novel objects were placed where the child could see both, but the experimenter wo ..."
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Cited by 4 (0 self)
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ABSTRACT—When learning new words, do children use a speaker’s eye gaze because it reveals referential intent? We conducted two experiments that addressed this ques-tion. In Experiment 1, the experimenter left while two novel objects were placed where the child could see both, but the experimenter would be able to see only one. The experimenter returned, looked directly at the mutually visible object, and said either, ‘‘There’s the [novel word]!’’ or ‘‘Where’s the [novel word]?’ ’ Two- through 4-year-olds selected the target of the speaker’s gaze more often on there trials than on where trials, although only the older chil-dren identified the referent correctly at above-chance levels on trials of both types. In Experiment 2, the exper-imenter placed a novel object where only the child could see it and left while the second object was similarly hidden.
