Given the widespread interest in the development of children's selective social learning, there is mounting evidence suggesting that infants prefer to learn from competent informants (Poulin‐Dubois & Brosseau‐Liard, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2016, 25). However, little research has been dedicated to understanding how this selectivity develops. The present study investigated whether causal learning and precursor metacognitive abilities govern discriminant learning in a classic word‐learning paradigm. Infants were exposed to a speaker who accurately (reliable condition) or inaccurately (unreliable condition) labeled familiar objects and were subsequently tested on their ability to learn a novel word from the informant. The predictive power of causal learning skills and precursor metacognition (as measured through decision confidence) on infants' word learning was examined across both reliable and unreliable conditions. Results suggest that infants are more inclined to accept an unreliable speaker's testimony on a word learning task when they also lack confidence in their own knowledge on a task measuring their metacognitive ability. Additionally, when uncertain, infants draw on causal learning abilities to better learn the association between a label and a novel toy. This study is the first to shed light on the role of causal learning and precursor metacognitive judgments in infants' abilities to engage in selective trust.

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The psychological mechanisms underlying infants' selective social learning are currently a subject of controversy. The main goal of the present study was to contribute data to this debate by investigating whether domain‐specific or domain‐general abilities guide infants' selectivity. Eighteen‐month‐olds observed a reliable and an unreliable speaker, and then completed a forced‐choice word learning paradigm, two theory of mind tasks, and an associative learning task. Results revealed that infants showed sensitivity to the verbal competence of the speaker. Additionally, infants with superior knowledge inference abilities were less likely to learn from the unreliable speaker. No link was observed between selective social learning and associative learning skills. These results replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating that socio‐cognitive abilities are linked to infants' selective social learning.