Social-cognitive processes in preschoolers' selective trust: Three cultures compared.

Abstract

Research on preschoolers' selective learning has mostly been conducted in English-speaking countries. We compared the performance of Turkish preschoolers (who are exposed to a language with evidential markers), Chinese preschoolers (known to be advanced in executive skills), and English preschoolers on an extended selective trust task (N = 144). We also measured children's executive function skills and their ability to attribute false belief. Overall we found a Turkish (rather than a Chinese) advantage in selective trust and a relationship between selective trust and false belief (rather than executive function). This is the 1st evidence that exposure to a language that obliges speakers to state the sources of their knowledge may sensitize preschoolers to informant reliability. It is also the first demonstration of an association between false belief and selective trust. Together these findings suggest that effective selective learning may progress alongside children's developing capacity to assess the knowledge of others.

Selective learning and teaching among Japanese and German children.

“…Notably, there was also no developmental change in Japanese children: performance of 6-year-old children was no better than those of 4-year-old children. Our study, therefore, demonstrates the existence of considerable cross-cultural differences in children's selective social learning (see also Lucas et al, 2013;Shneidman et al, 2016). Our results inform recent theoretical claims that human social and cultural learning might itself be a consequence of sociocultural processes (Heyes, 2012;Heyes & Frith, 2014) and ask for further research to explore the developmental origins of selective learning.…”

Preschoolers’ credulity toward misinformation from ingroup versus outgroup speakers

“…One possible account is that they did not attribute false beliefs to the speaker of either group and assumed that what they were told must represent reality (Lucas, Lewis, Pala, Wong, & Berridge, 2013). Supporting this, preschoolers with better performance in theory-of-mind tasks are less credulous toward misleading information in eyewitness interviews (e.g., Scullin & Bonner, 2006).…”

Selective social learning in infancy: looking for mechanisms

“…Theory of mind is defined as the ability to understand that others possess mental states, such as beliefs, knowledge, intentions, and desires (Wellman, 2014). In fact, such a link has been documented in numerous studies that have focused on preschool and school-age children (Brosseau-Liard et al, 2015;DiYanni & Kelemen, 2008;DiYanni, Nini, Rheel, & Livelli, 2012;Fusaro & Harris, 2008;Lucas, Lewis, Pala, Wong, & Berridge, 2013;Mills & Elashi, 2014). Thus, children who have a greater understanding of individuals' mental state of knowledge should be better able to selectively learn from others, since they can infer that the variability in accuracy reflects individual variation in knowledge (Brosseau-Liard, Penney, & Poulin-Dubois, 2015).…”