The Early Ontogeny of Reason Giving

Köymen, Bahar; Tomasello, Michael

doi:10.1111/cdep.12384

Cited by 41 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Our findings highlight that having a disagreement or conflicting perspectives in the context of collaborative problem-solving is crucial for prompting children to provide reasons for their claims (Köymen & Tomasello, 2018, 2020) and refer to gossip in our studies. Children and their partners received conflicting information in both conditions, but we manipulated the “relevance” of the gossip across the two conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Young children rely on gossip when jointly reasoning about whom to believe.

Köymen¹,

Engelmann²

2022

Developmental Psychology

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People rely on reputational information communicated via gossip when deciding about with whom to cooperate, whom to believe, and whom to trust. In two studies, we investigated whether 5-and 7-yearold children trust in gossip when determining a course of action. In Study 1, 5-and 7-year-old Germanspeaking peer dyads (N = 64 dyads, 32 female dyads) were presented with a collaborative problem-solving task (e.g., deciding together what a creature eats). Each child individually received conflicting information about the solution from a different informant (e.g., one proposed rocks; the other proposed sand). Each child additionally heard gossip about the informant's reputation: one informant had a good reputation; the other had a bad reputation. In the experimental condition, the reputation was relevant to the task (honesty), whereas it was irrelevant in the control condition (tidiness). Seven-year-old dyads, and 5-year-old dyads to a lesser extent, settled on the items suggested by the informant with good reputation in the experimental but not in the control condition. Only 7-year-old children explicitly referred to the information conveyed via gossip, engaging in metatalk about the reputations of the informants. In Study 2, we replicated these findings in a more controlled experiment in which 5-and 7-year-old American English-speaking children (N = 48, 27 girls) tried to convince an adult partner who proposed the item suggested by the informant with bad reputation. Thus, starting around age 5, and more reliably at age 7, children selectively rely on gossip in identifying trustworthy individuals in their collaborative reasoning with partners.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Young children rely on gossip when jointly reasoning about whom to believe.

Köymen¹,

Engelmann²

2022

Developmental Psychology

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“…Interestingly, we found across both experiments that children intervened more often in conventional than in moral situations. One possible interpretation of these findings is that children's main motivation for intervening was to teach the puppet about the norm because conventional norms can less easily be inferred from observing the consequences of one's action than moral norms against physical harm (Köymen & Tomasello, 2020). Clearly, however, alternative explanations of why children intervened more often in the conventional than in the moral conditions are possible.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preschoolers learn new moral and conventional norms from direct experiences

Langenhoff

Dahl

Srinivasan

2022

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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By observing others, children can learn about different types of norms, including moral norms rooted in concerns for welfare and rights, and social conventions based on directives from authority figures or social consensus. Two studies examined how preschoolers and adults constructed and applied knowledge about novel moral and conventional norms from their direct social experiences. Participants watched a video of a novel prohibited action that caused pain to a victim (moral conditions) or a sound from a box (conventional conditions), and then saw a transgressor puppet, who had either watched the video alongside the participant or not, engage in the prohibited action. Preschoolers and adults rapidly constructed distinct moral and conventional evaluations about the novel actions. These distinctions were evident across several response modalities that have often been studied separately, including judgments, reasoning, and actions. However, children did not reliably track the puppet's knowledge of the novel norms. These studies provide experimental support for the idea that children and adults construct distinct moral and conventional norms from social experiences, which in turn guide judgments, reasoning, and behavior.

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“…Producing meta‐talk requires speakers to reflect on their partners’ reasons, as well as their own reasons, and explain which set of reasons are better, a crucial ability in making rational collaborative decisions (Köymen & Tomasello, 2020; Mercier & Sperber, 2011). In two studies, we have demonstrated that starting at age 3, children spontaneously produce reasons based on eyewitness to justify their better knowledge access compared to their partner.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preschool children’s use of meta‐talk to make rational collaborative decisions

et al. 2022

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In collaborative decision‐making, partners compare reasons behind conflicting proposals through meta‐talk. We investigated UK‐based preschoolers’ (mixed socioeconomic status) use of meta‐talk (Data collection: 2018–2020). In Study 1, 5‐ and 7‐year‐old peer dyads (N = 128, 61 girls) heard conflicting claims about an animal from two informants. One prefaced her claim with “I know”; the other with “I think”. Dyads identified the more reliable informant through meta‐talk (“She said she knows”). In Study 2, 3‐ and 5‐year‐olds (N = 64, 34 girls) searched for a toy with an adult partner making incorrect proposals. Children refuted this through reporting what they had witnessed (It cannot be there because “I saw it move”, “she moved it”). In preschool period, children start using meta‐talk to make rational collaborative decisions.

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The Early Ontogeny of Reason Giving

Cited by 41 publications

References 32 publications

Young children rely on gossip when jointly reasoning about whom to believe.

Young children rely on gossip when jointly reasoning about whom to believe.

Preschoolers learn new moral and conventional norms from direct experiences

Preschool children’s use of meta‐talk to make rational collaborative decisions

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