What Could You Really Learn on Your Own?: Understanding the Epistemic Limitations of Knowledge Acquisition

Abstract

Three studies explored the abilities of 205 children (5–11 years) and 74 adults (18–72 years) to distinguish directly vs. indirectly acquired information in a scenario where an individual grew up in isolation from human culture. Directly acquired information is knowledge acquired through first-hand experience. Indirectly acquired information is knowledge that requires input from others. All children distinguished directly from indirectly acquired knowledge (Studies 1–3), even when the indirectly acquired knowledge was highly familiar (Study 2). All children also distinguished difficult-to-acquire direct knowledge from simple-to-acquire direct knowledge (Study 3). The major developmental change was the increasing ability to completely rule out indirect knowledge as possible for an isolated individual to acquire.

What Do Group Members Share? The Privileged Status of Cultural Knowledge for Children

“…An interesting future direction would be to explore group‐based generalizations of generic information that is not group‐specific, but unlike the facts used in this study, needs to be acquired through testimony of others, such as knowledge of certain scientific facts (Harris & Koenig, ). Children, like adults, consider such indirect information (e.g., that the earth is round) as less likely to be self‐acquired, compared to directly observable information (e.g., that the sky is blue) (Lockhart et al, ). Accordingly, they might assume that such knowledge is delimited by group membership to a greater degree than self‐evident generic knowledge.…”

“…This might suggest that children's social inferences are not entirely shaped by how they themselves acquire knowledge. Indeed, children, at this age, show parallel reasoning to adults in terms of what information can be self‐acquired (Lockhart et al, ). Consequently, while they might learn that cats can see better than humans in the dark through their teachers or parents, children might reason that because such information is observable, it is available to everyone.…”

“…Children show some awareness of these distinctions. For instance, children aged between 5 and 11 years distinguish between direct knowledge that can be acquired through first‐hand experience and indirect knowledge that requires learning from others, and expect someone who lives in isolation to have access to only direct knowledge (Lockhart, Goddu, Smith & Keil, ). Similarly, 4‐to 7‐year‐old children expect novel generic facts (e.g., “hedgehogs eat hexapods”) to be known by their mothers, whereas they do not hold a similar expectation for novel non‐generic facts (“some hedgehogs ate hexapods last night”) (Cimpian & Scott, ).…”

The Privileged Status of Knowing Mechanistic Information: An Early Epistemic Bias

“…Study 1 had 48 child participants in a single age group. This number was based on related studies (e.g., Lockhart, Goddu, Smith, & Keil, ) where sample sizes of 24 provided robust results. Because it was the first study in this new set and given that it was the youngest age group used in Lockhart et al., , the number was doubled so as to ensure that any findings were likely to be robust.…”

“…Given other studies showing that children believe in the importance of “innards” (R. Gelman, ) and that insides are often linked with “essences” (S. Gelman, ), children might have attributed more knowledge to those who merely mentioned inside hidden parts. In addition, children may have assumed that external features were more accessible and easily learned on one's own, making claims citing external features less indicative of deep knowledge (Lockhart et al., ). This assumption may serve as a convenient heuristic even if it is not always warranted.…”