Early Understanding of the Division of Cognitive Labor

Abstract

Two studies with 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (N = 104) examined whether young children can differentiate expertise in the minds of others. Study 1 revealed that all children in the sample could correctly attribute observable knowledge to familiar experts (i.e., a doctor and a car mechanic). Further, 4- and 5-year-olds could correctly attribute knowledge of underlying scientific principles to the appropriate experts. In contrast, Study 2 demonstrated that 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds have difficulty making attributions of knowledge of scientific principles to unfamiliar experts. A computational analysis in Study 3 indicated that 4- and 5-year-olds' successes on the first two studies could not be attributed to the way in which words co-occur in discourse. Overall, these studies showed that young children have a sense of the division of cognitive labor, albeit fragile.

The folk conception of knowledge

“…This research shows that even children as young as 3-4 years do not blindly accept the testimony of others as fact, but selectively trust speakers that have been accurate in past, as well as speakers that are older, more familiar, more certain, and more expert (e.g., Birch, Vauthier, & Bloom, 2008;Corriveau & Harris, 2009;Jaswal & Neely, 2006;Koenig, Clement, & Harris, 2004;Lutz & Keil, 2002;Sabbagh & Baldwin, 2001;Taylor, Cartwright, & Bowden, 1991). Earlier research directly examining knowledge attributions investigated the ages at which children infer that access to different types of information leads to knowledge or ignorance (e.g., Pratt & Bryant, 1990;Sodian, 1988;Sodian & Wimmer, 1987; 0010-0277/$ -see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.…”

Children’s developing notions of (im)partiality

“…However, related research examining how children evaluate information suggests that young children recognize the importance of informed testimony and judgments: They distinguish knowledgeable speakers from ignorant ones when learning new words (Jaswal & Neely, 2006;Koenig, Clement, & Harris, 2004;Sabbagh & Baldwin, 2001) and when dealing with misinformation (Welch-Ross, 1999). Four-year-olds understand that sometimes people do not have enough knowledge to provide accurate statements (Sodian, 1988;Wimmer & Perner, 1983), and that some people are more knowledgeable than others for a given topic (Lutz & Keil, 2002). Preschoolers discount information presented by a discredited source, such as an adult who was described as being "silly" (Lampinen & Smith, 1995), or someone that has made a series of mistakes in the past (Pasquini, Corriveau, Koenig, & Harris, 2007), and kindergartners discount implausible statements about transgressions that clearly contradict with reality (e.g., a ghost jumped out of a book and broke a glass; Lee, Cameron, Doucette, & Talwar, 2002).…”

Sins of omission: Children selectively explore when teachers are under-informative

“…calling a ball a ball) than from someone who labeled the familiar object incorrectly (e.g., calling a ball a shoe; Koenig & Harris, 2005). Children are also sensitive to indirect cues to informant reliability, including verbal and non-verbal cues suggesting ignorance or doubt (Koenig & Harris, 2005;Sabbagh & Baldwin, 2001;Birch, Akmal, & Frampton, 2010), differences in informants' expertise or specialized knowledge (Lutz & Keil, 2002;Sobel & Corriveau, 2010), and descriptions of informants' benevolent or malevolent intent (Dunfield, Kuhlmeier, & Murphy, 2013;Landrum, Mills, & Johnston, 2013).…”