Children's evaluation of the certainty of another person's inductive inferences and guesses

In three studies, 5–10-year-old children and an adult comparison group judged another's certainty in making inductive inferences and guesses. Participants observed a puppet make strong inductions, weak inductions, and guesses. Participants either had no information about the correctness of the puppet's conclusion, knew that the puppet was correct, or knew that the puppet was incorrect. Children of all ages (but not adults) rated the puppet as more certain about statements the child knew to be correct than statements the child knew to be incorrect. When assessing another's certainty, children have difficulty inhibiting their own knowledge and focusing on the other's perspective. Children were more likely to differentiate between inductions and guesses when the puppet made an Incorrect Statement, but even the oldest children did not differentiate consistently. The distinction between induction and guessing appears to be only acquired gradually but is important as a contributor to more advanced forms of reasoning and epistemological understanding.     

Bidirectional priming in infants

In associative priming, the direct activation of one concept indirectly activates others that are associated with it, depending on the directionality of the association. We asked whether associative priming in preverbal infants is bidirectional. Infants associated a puppet imitation task with an operant train task by watching an adult model target actions on the puppet in the incidental context of the train. Later, priming of the forgotten memory of the train task reactivated the infants' memory of the puppet task (Experiment 1), and priming of the infants' forgotten memory of the puppet task reactivated their memory of the train task (Experiment 2). The finding that associative priming was bidirectional offers new insights into the nature of the mnemonic networks formed early in infancy. Additionally, the fact that the present association was formed rapidly and incidentally suggests that a fast mapping, general learning mechanism, like that posited to mediate word-object learning, was responsible for its encoding.     

Over-imitating preschoolers believe unnecessary actions are normative and enforce their performance by a third party

Over-imitation, which is common in children, is the imitation of elements of an action sequence that are clearly unnecessary for reaching the final goal. A variety of cognitive mechanisms have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. Here, 48 3- and 5-year-olds together with a puppet observed an adult demonstrate instrumental tasks that included an unnecessary action. Failure of the puppet to perform the unnecessary action resulted in spontaneous protest by the majority of the children, with some using normative language. Children also protested in comparison tasks in which the puppet violated convention or instrumental rationality. Protest in response to the puppet's omission of unnecessary action occurred even after the puppet's successful achievement of the goal. This observation is not compatible with the hypothesis that the primary cause of over-imitation is that children believe the unnecessary action causes the goal. There are multiple domains that children may believe determine the unnecessary action's normativity, two being social convention and instrumental rationality. Because the demonstration provides no information about which domains are relevant, children are capable of encoding apparently unnecessary action as normative without information as to which domain determines the unnecessary action's normativity. This study demonstrates an early link between two processes of fundamental importance for human culture: faithful imitation and the adherence to and enforcement of norms.     

Children over-imitate adults and peers more than puppets

Researchers commonly use puppets in development science. Amongst other things, puppets are employed to reduce social hierarchies between child participants and adult experimenters akin to peer interactions. However, it remains controversial whether children treat puppets like real-world social partners in these settings. This study investigated children's imitation of causally irrelevant actions (i.e., over-imitation) performed by puppet, adult, or child models. Seventy-two German children (Age_Range = 4.6–6.5 years; 36 girls) from urban, socioeconomically diverse backgrounds observed a model retrieving stickers from reward containers. The model performed causally irrelevant actions either in contact with the reward container or not. Children were more likely to over-imitate adults’ and peers’ actions as compared to puppets’ actions. Across models, they copied contact actions more than no-contact actions. While children imitate causally irrelevant actions from puppet models to some extent, their social learning from puppets does not necessarily match their social learning from real-world social agents, such as children or adults.

Research Highlights

• We examined children's over-imitation from adult, child, and puppet models to validate puppetry as an approach to simulate non-hierarchical interactions.
• Children imitated adults and child models at slightly higher rates than puppets.
• This effect was present regardless of whether the irrelevant actions involved physical contact to the reward container or not.
• In our study children's social learning from puppets does not match their social learning from human models.

     

Understanding inference as a source of knowledge: children's ability to evaluate the certainty of deduction, perception, and guessing

Three experiments investigated children's understanding of inference as a source of knowledge. Children observed a puppet make a statement about the color of one of two hidden toys after the puppet (a) looked directly at the toy (looking), (b) looked at the other toy (inference), or (c) looked at neither toy (guessing). Most 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds did not rate the puppet as being more certain of the toy's color after the puppet looked directly at it or inferred its color than they did after the puppet guessed its color. Most 8 and 9-year-olds distinguished inference and looking from guessing. The tendency to explain the puppet's knowledge by referring to inference increased with age. Children who referred to inference in their explanations were more likely to judge deductive inference as more certain than guessing.     

Children's attention to beliefs in interactive persuasion tasks

Whether and when children can apply their developing understanding of belief to persuasion was examined using interactive puppet tasks. Children selected 1 of 2 arguments to persuade a puppet to do something (e.g., pet a dog) after hearing the puppet's belief (e.g., "I think puppies bite"). Across 2 studies, 132 children (ages 3-7 years) engaged in these persuasion tasks and in false-belief reasoning tasks, presented in puppet and story formats. Belief-relevant argument selection increased with age, as did appropriate reasoning about false beliefs, and occurred more in puppet than story tasks. Results suggest that improvements in belief reasoning in early childhood may be reflected in social interactions such as persuasion.     

Secrecy and suggestibility: are children's memories for secrets less suggestible than other memories?

Adult secrecy research has found a memory‐enhancing effect for information kept secret as the secret is mentally rehearsed each time the adult is required to prevent it being reported (e.g. Lane & Wegner, 1994). The present study examined possible memory‐enhancing effects of children keeping information secret. Two hundred and thirty two five to eight year olds took part in a puppet‐making task. During the task the puppet‐maker sprayed glitter onto the puppets. Half the children were told to keep a secret (that the spray had been taken from Disneyland) and the other half (the control group) were merely told the spray was from Disneyland. One week later the children were interviewed either by the puppet‐maker (the secret‐giver) or by the puppet‐maker's friend (the secret‐novice). The five to six year olds showed no effect of the secret condition, whereas the seven to eight year olds made significantly less errors in their free recall in the secret condition compared to the control condition. There was no effect of the secret condition on children's suggestibility to leading questions. However, both age groups were significantly more suggestible when interviewed by the secret‐giver. Finally, both age groups showed a recall deficit in the secret condition. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Selective,but Only if It Is Free: Children Trust Inaccurate Individuals More when Alternative Sources Are Costly

The present research examines the effect of the costliness of an information source on children's selective learning. In three experiments (total N = 112), 4‐ to 7‐year‐olds were given the opportunity to acquire and endorse information from one of two sources. One source, a computer, was described as always accurate; the other source, a puppet, had a history of either accuracy or inaccuracy. For some children, learning from the computer required giving away stickers. The costliness of the computer clue reduced children's use of this source across all experiments, but its effect on children's use of the puppet varied based on the puppet's accuracy and the type of information learned. Children's trust in the puppet was above chance regardless of the cost of the computer when they were learning generalizable semantic information and the puppet had a history of accuracy. When the puppet was inaccurate or when children learned episodic information, the costliness of the computer significantly increased children's trust in the puppet. Hence, attaching a cost to a preferred knowledge source reduces children's selectivity and increases their trust in sources that they would not otherwise see as desirable. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's understanding of inferential knowledge

The understanding of inference as a source of knowledge for 4- and 6-year-old children was investigated. Children and a puppet were shown 2 toys of different colors. The toys were hidden in separate plastic cans. After the puppet looked into 1 of the cans, 6-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, usually judged that the puppet knew the color of the toy in the other can as well. The finding that 6-year-olds attributed inferential knowledge to another observer is interpreted as evidence that children begin to understand the role of cognitive processes in knowledge acquisition around the age of 6 years.     

When do children learn from unreliable speakers?

Children do not necessarily disbelieve a speaker with a history of inaccuracy; they take into account reasons for errors. Three- to five-year-olds (N = 97) aimed to identify a hidden target in collaboration with a puppet. The puppet’s history of inaccuracy arose either from false beliefs or occurred despite his being fully informed. On a subsequent test trial, children’s realistic expectation about the target was contradicted by the puppet who was fully informed. Children were more likely to revise their belief in line with the puppet’s assertion when his previous errors were due to false beliefs. Children who explained this puppet’s prior inaccuracy in terms of false belief were more likely to believe the puppet than those who did not. As children’s understanding of the mind advances, they increasingly balance the risk of learning falsehoods from unreliable speakers against that of rejecting truths from speakers who made excusable errors.     

The emergence of motor imagery in children

A total of 80 children (40 5-year-olds and 40 7-year-olds) took part in an experiment to evaluate their capacity to mentally evoke a motor image of their own displacement. Using a chronometry paradigm, movement duration was compared in a task where children were asked to move in order to take a puppet back to its home (actual) and to think about themselves executing the same action (virtual). Movement durations for actual and virtual displacements were obtained in two conditions, where either no information was provided about the weight of the puppet to be displaced (standard situation) or the puppet was described as being heavy (informed situation). A significant correlation between actual and virtual walking durations was observed for 7-year-olds in the informed condition. This result provides evidence for a motor imagery process emerging in 7-year-olds when children are required to think about themselves in action.     

Development of young children's understanding that the recent past is causally bound to the present

The results of 6 studies (involving 304 children) suggested that 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understand that very recent past events determine the present. In Studies 1-3, 3- and 4-year-old children were introduced to 2 empty hiding locations. With children's backs to these locations, a camera recorded an experimenter secretly hiding a puppet in one of them. Children then viewed the videotape of what had just happened, along with another tape that depicted identical events except with a different child and with the puppet hidden in the other location. Only 4-year-olds were subsequently able to locate the puppet, even though 3-year-olds remembered the contents of the tapes and understood the equivalence between the video events and the real world. In Study 4, similar effects were obtained when a verbal analog of the test was presented to 3-5-year-olds. Studies 5 and 6 showed that when children observed 2 events in which they had just participated, only 5-year-olds understood that the most recent events were relevant.     

Attentional Predictors of 5‐month‐olds' Performance on a Looking A‐not‐B Task

In the first year of life, the ability to search for hidden objects is an indicator of object permanence and, when multiple locations are involved, executive function (i.e. inhibition, cognitive flexibility and working memory). The current study was designed to examine attentional predictors of search in 5‐month‐old infants (as measured by the looking A‐not‐B task), and whether levels of maternal education moderated the effect of the predictors. Specifically, in a separate task, the infants were shown a unique puppet, and we measured the percentage of time attending to the puppet, as well as the length of the longest look (i.e., peak fixation) directed towards the puppet. Across the entire sample (N = 390), the percentage of time attending to the puppet was positively related to performance on the visual A‐not‐B task. However, for infants whose mothers had not completed college, having a shorter peak looking time (after controlling for percentage of time) was also a predictor of visual A‐not‐B performance. The role of attention, peak fixation and maternal education in visual search is discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Infant long-term memory for associations formed during mere exposure

We previously found that young infants spontaneously associate stimuli that they merely see together. Using a sensory preconditioning paradigm with 6- and 9-month-olds, we asked how long such associations remain latent before being forgotten and what exposure conditions affect their persistence. Groups were preexposed to two puppets for 1 h/day for 2 days, 1 h on 1 day, or 1 h on 1 day in two sessions; 1-27 days later, target actions were modeled on one puppet, and infants were tested with the other puppet 1 day later. The longest delay after which infants imitated the actions on the other puppet defined how long they remembered the association. The data revealed that the preexposure regimen determined retention. Regardless of exposure time, both ages remembered the association longer after two sessions, and younger infants remembered longer than older infants - for 4 weeks - after two 30-min sessions on 1 day.     

Older children's misunderstanding of uncertain belief after passing the false belief test

A four-location belief task was designed to examine children's understanding of another's uncertain belief after passing a false belief (FB) task. In Experiment 1, after passing the FB task, participants were asked what a puppet would do after he failed to find his toy at the falsely believed location. Most 4-year-olds and half of 6-year-olds children who passed the FB test showed difficulty in handling uncertain belief; answering that the puppet would then look for his toy at the current (moved-to) location. Eight-year-old children and adults all recognized that the puppet would look for the toy everywhere, or at random. In Experiment 2, 4- and 6-year-olds were presented two other search tasks; it was shown that preschoolers could use search strategies to solve a similar search problem when FB was not involved. This new aspect of post-FB understanding can be interpreted in terms of limited understanding of uncertainty in a less-knowledgeable individual and of limited ability to infer the consequences of belief-disconfirmation.     

Infants’ enumeration of dynamic displays

This study examined infants’ enumeration of puppet jumping tasks. In Experiment 1, 5–7-month-old infants were familiarized to a puppet jumping two or three times, and tested with both numbers of jumps. Infants looked significantly longer at the new number, replicating Wynn [Psychol. Sci. 7 (1996) 164]. To probe further the stability of infants’ ability to enumerate, Experiment 2 varied the rate of the jumps during habituation and controlled for rate across test trials. At test, infants showed no preference for either event, suggesting that rate changes can overpower infants’ responses to number. Experiment 3 explored an alternative explanation to infants’ enumeration, namely discrimination based on the amount of time the puppet spent jumping. Infants were familiarized to two or three jumps, then tested with alternating displays of either a familiar number of jumps with a novel jump time, or a novel number of jumps with the familiar jump time. Infants dishabituated to the display that changed in jump time, but not to the display that changed in number. Results suggest that infants’ looking in event sequences is based on amount of motion, not enumeration. This finding is consistent with studies finding perceptual processes behind infants’ supposed precocious numerical abilities.     

The semantics of secrecy: young children's classification of secret content

The authors explored whether young children can distinguish potential secrets from nonsecrets by their content, as can older children, adolescents, and adults. Ninety children, 4, 5, and 6 years old, rated the secrecy of items from an adult-validated list of personal information about an age- and gender-appropriate puppet. Two factors of the children's data corresponded to the adult categories of nonsecrets and secrets, and a third factor corresponded to surprises. All ages rated surprises as significantly more secret than nonsecret items; however, the surprise items contained linguistic cues to secrecy. A tendency to rate nonsecrets as secret decreased with age, but only the 6-year-olds rated secrets other than surprises as significantly more secret than nonsecrets. Thus, children acquire the implicit rules defining secret content from a somewhat later age than that reported for the cognitive or behavioral capacities for secrecy.     

Preference for distribution by equal outcome in 5- and 6-year-old children

This study investigated preferences for types of fairness applied in resource distribution. We consider two types of equal distribution: according to the equal-allocation principle (new resources are distributed evenly without considering currently possessed resources) or the equal-outcome principle (equal outcome amounts result after distribution because current resources are considered). Children aged 5–6 and adults participated. The participant initially had two sets of two marbles (participant condition) or each of two puppets initially had two marbles (puppet condition). Then one puppet distributed new marbles between itself and the participant by equal-outcome. Next, the other puppet distributed new marbles by equal-allocation. The results showed that the majority of children and adults selected the distribution by equal-outcome for both conditions. This suggests that people prefer distribution by equal-outcome to distribution by equal-allocation. However, some children aged 5–6 thought that distribution by equal-allocation was better only when they already had resources.     

Mediated imitation in 6-month-olds: remembering by association

In two experiments with 72 6-month-olds, we examined whether associating an imitation task with an operant task affects infants' memory for either task. In Experiment 1, infants who imitated target actions that were modeled for 60 s on a hand puppet remembered them for only 1 day. We hypothesized that if infants associated the puppet imitation task with a longer-remembered operant task, then they might remember it longer too. In Experiment 2, infants learned to press a lever to activate a miniature train-a task 6-month-olds remember for 2 weeks-and saw the target actions modeled immediately afterward. These infants successfully imitated for up to 2 weeks, but only if the train memory was retrieved first. A follow-up experiment revealed that the learned association was bidirectional. This is the first demonstration of mediated imitation in 6-month-olds across two very different paradigms and reveals that associations are an important means of protracting memories.