Children's working understanding of the knowledge gained from seeing and feeling

Abstract

In three experiments children aged between 3 and 5 years (N = 38; 52; 94; mean ages 3;7 to 5;2) indicated their confidence in their knowledge of the identity of a hidden toy. With the exception of some 3-year-olds, children revealed working understanding of their knowledge source by showing high confidence when they had seen or felt the toy, and lower confidence when they had been told its identity by an apparently well-informed speaker, especially when the speaker subsequently doubted the adequacy of his access to the toy. After a 2-minute delay, 3-to 4-year olds, unlike 4-to 5-year-olds, failed to see the implications of the speaker's doubt about his access.Working understanding of knowledge sources 3 Children's Working Understanding of Knowledge Sources: Confidence in Knowledge Gained from TestimonyThe ability to recall or infer how we know something is crucially important for assessing the accuracy of our knowledge (Johnson, Hashtroudi & Linsday, 1993).Suppose a companion on a country walk reports spotting an unusual bird that I failed to notice. I have no reason to doubt her, and so I believe that this particular bird was indeed in the area. However, that evening my companion mentions that she was not wearing her glasses on the walk. If I recollect that she was the source of my belief about the bird's presence, I might now be less sure of its truth: I thought she had seen the bird adequately to identify it and differentiate it from a more common variety, but now I find that she had not. In contrast, if I do not recollect how my belief was acquired, I will draw no such implication from her comment about the missing glasses. I will continue to treat my belief as factually true. Importantly, this kind of source-identification and evaluation allows adults to keep a check on the likely truth of their knowledge even in the absence of contradicting information. Note that in this example I had no independent information that the bird was not present, but nevertheless I had good grounds for reducing my confidence in my belief that it was.The need to engage in such source identification and evaluation arises early in childhood. As children's mastery of language increases, they need skills to assess the likely truth of what they are told in order to benefit fully from other people's experience of the world. This holds not just at the time of originally hearing an utterance, but also, as in the example above, subsequently, once the information conveyed has become part of their own knowledge base. Without such skills, children will be at risk of believing what is false or disbelieving what is true. Working understanding of knowledge sources 4In the research reported below we examined how 3-to 5-year-old children behaved in circumstances similar to the example above. A speaker appeared to have seen a hidden toy before telling the child its color, or to have felt before telling the child whether it was hard or soft. After the child believed what she was told, the speaker doubted that he had felt or looked properly...

Adults see vision to be more informative than it is

“…We suggest that a bias for vision can be observed both when the object identity is known (e.g., Experiment 1 of the current study; Experiments 2 and 3 of O'Neill et al) and when it is unknown (e.g., Experiment 2 of the current study; Experiment 2 of Robinson et al, 1997). On the other hand, a bias to overestimate the informativeness of touch is likely driven by the lack of knowledge about the object's identity (e.g., Experiment 2 of the current study; Experiment 1 of O'Neill et al; Experiment 2 of Robinson et al, 2008). One potential explanation for the bias to overestimate the informativeness of touch to only occur under such a condition is that in our daily experience we obtain much information about an unknown object by feeling it (or to be precise, feeling it whilst looking at it ).…”

“…Prior evidence suggests that different task contexts can lead to biases for different modes of access, including both vision and touch (O'Neill et al, 1992; Robinson et al, 2008). To our knowledge, O'Neill et al was the only other study to demonstrate biases to overestimate the informativeness of both vision and touch.…”

“…This finding is consistent with some previous developmental studies. These studies suggest that in certain circumstances, children choose touch, rather than vision, as their preferred mode of access for identifying an object (O'Neill et al, 1992; Robinson, Haigh, & Pendle, 2008). In other circumstances, children chose equally between vision and touch (Waters & Beck, 2009, 2012).…”

To Trust or not to Trust? Children’s Social Epistemology

“…Three-to 4-year old children were able, like 4-to 5-year-olds, to discriminate between information they acquired from their own direct experience versus information from an apparently cooperative and wellinformed experimenter. However, when a delay was introduced, younger children tended to forget about the conditions that surrounded the informant's utterances, particularly the level of certainty or doubt he or she acknowledged (Robinson et al 2008a).…”

Pointing disrupts preschoolers’ ability to discriminate between knowledgeable and ignorant informants

“…There is compelling evidence that young children recognize that visual access can be a unique source of knowledge about an object or event (O’Neill, 1996; O’Neill, Astington, & Flavell, 1992; O’Neill & Topolovec, 2001; Pratt & Bryant, 1990; Robinson, Haigh, Pendle, 2008). In a study by O’Neill et al (1992), for example, children watched as one puppet looked into an opaque tunnel at a toy, while another simply placed its hand on the tunnel.…”