Naming solids and nonsolids: Children's default construals

Four experiments used a free-naming task to examine children's and adults' default construals of solids and nonsolids. In Experiment 1,4-year-old children viewed entities presented in familiar geometric shapes (e.g., square, triangle), without touching them. One half saw solids (e.g., a square made of wood); the other half saw nonsol ids matched carefully in shape (e.g., a square with the same dimensions but made of peanut butter). To tap their default construals, children were simply asked, “What is that?” Answers varied sharply with the type of stimulus. If the entity was solid, children tended to provide an individual-related word (e.g., “a square”), even if they also knew a substance-related word (e.g., “wood”). But if the stimulus was nonsolid, children tended to give a substance-related word (e.g., “peanut butter”), even if they also knew an individual-related word (e.g., “a square”). These words were usually common nouns produced in appropriate sentential contexts, suggesting that 4-year-olds represented the words as naming kinds. The same pattern of results obtained in Experiments 2 and 3, which were modified replications of Experiment 1. The results of Experiment 4 replicated the main findings of Experiment 1 using adults as participants. The studies suggest that, as a default, 4-year-olds conceptualize solids and nonsolids in (a) fundamentally distinct, (b) kind-based (rather than perceptual property-based), and (c) adult-like ways.     

“I Believe in Cusk”: The Effect of Explicit Belief Statements on Children’s Reality Status Judgments and Beliefs about Consensus

Children learn about the world through others’ testimony, and much of this knowledge likely comes from parents. Furthermore, parents may sometimes want children to share their beliefs about topics on which there is no universal consensus. In discussing such topics, parents may use explicit belief statements (e.g., “Evolution is real”) or implicit belief statements (e.g., “Evolution happened over millions of years”). But little research has investigated how such statements affect children’s beliefs. In the current study, 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 102) were shown videos of their parent providing either Explicit (“Cusk is real”) or Implicit (“I know about cusk”) belief testimony about novel entities. Then, children heard another speaker provide either Denial (“Cusk isn’t real”) or Neutral (“I’ve heard of cusk”) testimony. Children made reality status judgments and consensus judgments (i.e., whether people agree about the entity’s existence). Results showed that explicit and implicit belief statements differentially influenced children’s beliefs about societal consensus when followed by a denial: explicit belief statements prevented children from drawing the conclusion that there is societal consensus that the entity does not exist. This effect was not related to age, indicating that children as young as 4 use these cues to inform consensus judgments. On the reality status task, there was an interaction with age, showing that only 4-year-olds were more likely to believe in an entity after hearing explicit belief statements. These findings suggest that explicit belief statements may serve as important sources of both children’s beliefs about novel entities and societal consensus.     

Preschoolers favor the creator's label when reasoning about an artifact's function

The creator of an artifact, by virtue of having made the object, has privileged knowledge about its intended function. Do children recognize that the label an artifact's creator uses can convey this privileged information? 3- and 4-year-olds were presented with an object that looked like a member of one familiar artifact category, but which the speaker referred to with the label of a different familiar category (e.g. a key-like object was called a "spoon"). Children who heard the speaker refer to the object as something she made were more likely to assign its function on the basis of the anomalous label she used than those who heard it referred to as something the speaker found. Thus, even very young children expect a unique connection between the label the creator of an artifact uses and the function she intends it to have.     

Preschoolers trust novel members of accurate speakers' groups and judge them favourably

By age 3, children track a speaker's record of past accuracy and use it as a cue to current reliability. Two experiments (N?=?95 children) explored whether preschoolers' judgements about, and trust in, the accuracy of a previously reliable informant extend to other members of the informant's group. In Experiment 1, both 3- and 4-year-olds consistently judged an animated character who was associated with a previously accurate speaker more likely to be correct than a character associated with a previously inaccurate speaker, despite possessing no information about these characters' individual records of reliability. They continued to show this preference one week later. Experiment 2 presented 4- and 5-year-olds with a related task using videos of human actors. Both showed preferences for members of previously accurate speakers' groups on a common measure of epistemic trust. This result suggests that by at least age 4, children's trust in speaker testimony spreads to members of a previously accurate speaker's group.     

Index to Volume 163

This study investigated the effects of the motor and verbal aspects of modeling on imitation. The subjects were 2- and 3-year-old children (N = 96). The child's imitation responses were recorded during the play period that followed each modeled act. Each child observed the model in one of four modeling conditions. In Condition 1, the model “flew” a telephone while saying that he or she was flying an airplane. Imitation was recorded as motor if the child flew the telephone but was recorded as verbal and realistic if the child flew an airplane. In Condition 2, the model flew an airplane while saying that he or she was flying a telephone. Imitation was recorded as verbal if the child flew the telephone. In Condition 3, the model flew an airplane and said that he or she was flying an airplane. If the child flew an airplane, imitation was scored as motor, verbal, and. realistic. In Condition 4, the model flew a telephone and said that he or she was flying a telephone. Imitation was scored as motor and verbal if the child flew the telephone but was scored as realistic if the child flew the airplane. In Condition 1, 2-year-olds displayed more motor imitation than 3-year-olds, and 3-year-olds displayed more verbal-reality imitation than 2-year-olds. Boys displayed more motor imitation than girls. There were no age or sex differences in Condition 2. In Condition 3, 2-year-olds imitated more than 3-year-olds, with 3-year-old girls imitating the least. In Condition 4, reality imitation was largely due to 2-year-old boys' imitation of masculine-type acts.     

Reasoning about knowledge: Children’s evaluations of generality and verifiability

In a series of experiments, we examined 3- to 8-year-old children’s (N = 223) and adults’ (N = 32) use of two properties of testimony to estimate a speaker’s knowledge: generality and verifiability. Participants were presented with a “Generic speaker” who made a series of 4 general claims about “pangolins” (a novel animal kind), and a “Specific speaker” who made a series of 4 specific claims about “this pangolin” as an individual. To investigate the role of verifiability, we systematically varied whether the claim referred to a perceptually-obvious feature visible in a picture (e.g., “has a pointy nose”) or a non-evident feature that was not visible (e.g., “sleeps in a hollow tree”). Three main findings emerged: (1) young children showed a pronounced reliance on verifiability that decreased with age. Three-year-old children were especially prone to credit knowledge to speakers who made verifiable claims, whereas 7- to 8-year-olds and adults credited knowledge to generic speakers regardless of whether the claims were verifiable; (2) children’s attributions of knowledge to generic speakers was not detectable until age 5, and only when those claims were also verifiable; (3) children often generalized speakers’ knowledge outside of the pangolin domain, indicating a belief that a person’s knowledge about pangolins likely extends to new facts. Findings indicate that young children may be inclined to doubt speakers who make claims they cannot verify themselves, as well as a developmentally increasing appreciation for speakers who make general claims.     

Charting the development of representational skills: When do children know that maps can lead and mislead?

This study was conducted to test Perner's (1991) hypothesis that 3-year-olds fail the false belief task because they cannot metarepresent (represent a representation's sense and reference). Preschoolers made and interpreted symbolic maps, and were tested on their understanding of the implications of following an incorrect map (false belief test). Young 3-year-olds showed some ability to make and use maps but performed poorly on the false belief tests. Children were more likely to use an incorrect map to predict behavior if the represented object was missing instead of in a wrong location. Many children were also able to predict that someone who used an incorrect map would not “find” the object. These results contradict Perner's hypothesis and suggest that representational skills develop gradually rather than appearing in a radical conceptual shift at age 4.     

Right and Righteous: Children's Incipient Understanding and Evaluation of True and False Statements

Two studies examined young children's early understanding and evaluation of truth telling and lying and the role that factuality plays in their judgments. Study 1 (one hundred four 2- to 5-year-olds) found that even the youngest children reliably accepted true statements and rejected false statements and that older children's ability to label true and false (T/F) statements as “truth” and “lie” emerged in tandem with their positive evaluation of true statements and “truth” and their negative evaluation of false statements and “lie.” The findings suggest that children's early preference for factuality develops into a conception of “truth” and “lie” that is linked both to factuality and moral evaluation. Study 2 (one hundred twenty-eight 3- to 5-year-olds) revealed that whereas young children exhibited good understanding of the association of T/F statements with “truth,” “lie,” “mistake,” “right,” and “wrong,” they showed little awareness of assumptions about speaker knowledge underlying “lie” and “mistake.” The results further support the primacy of factuality in children's early understanding and evaluation of truth and lies.     

Developing domain-specific causal-explanatory frameworks: the role of insides and immanence

Two studies investigate children's knowledge of internal parts and their endorsement of immanent causes for the behaviors of living and non-living things. Study 1, involving 48 preschoolers, showed that domain-specific knowledge of internal parts develops between ages 3 and 4. Study 2 included 43 4-year-olds, 30 8-year-olds, and 35 adults and showed that preschoolers do not endorse these internal parts as causally responsible for familiar biological events (e.g., movement, growth). Like adults and older children, however, preschoolers endorse an abstract cause, “its own energy,” for animals but not for machines. The results suggest that children recognize domain-specific internal parts as early as age 4 but that their causal attributions are not yet anchored in a detailed biological theory. Findings are discussed in terms of theory change and an essentialist assumption.     

Young Bilingual Children's Heightened Sensitivity to Referential Cues

Children growing up in a dual-language environment have to constantly monitor the dynamic communicative context to determine what the speaker is trying to say and how to respond appropriately. Such self-generated efforts to monitor speakers' communicative needs may heighten children's sensitivity to, and allow them to make better use of, referential gestures to figure out a speaker's referential intent. In a series of studies, we explored monolingual and bilingual preschoolers' use of nonverbal referential gestures such as pointing and gaze direction to figure out a speaker's intent to refer. In Study 1, we found that 3- and 4-year-old bilingual children were better able than monolingual children to use referential gestures (e.g., gaze direction) to locate a hidden toy in the face of conflicting body-distal information (the experimenter was seated behind an empty box while the cue was directed at the correct box). Study 2 found that by 5 years of age, monolingual children had mastered this task. Study 3 established that the bilingual advantage can be found in children as young as 2 years old. Thus, the experience of growing up in a bilingual environment fosters the development of the understanding of referential intent.     

Attention to Explicit and Implicit Contrast in Verb Learning

Contrast information could be useful for verb learning, but few studies have examined children's ability to use this type of information. Contrast may be useful when children are told explicitly that different verbs apply, or when they hear two different verbs in a single context. Three studies examine children's attention to different types of contrast as they learn new verbs. Study 1 shows that 3.5-year-olds can use both implicit contrast (“I'm meeking it. I'm koobing it.”) and explicit contrast (“I'm meeking it. I'm not meeking it.”) when learning a new verb, while a control group's responses did not differ from chance. Study 2 shows that even though children at this age who hear explicit contrast statements differ from a control group, they do not reliably extend a newly learned verb to events with new objects. In Study 3, children in three age groups were given both comparison and contrast information, not in blocks of trials as in past studies, but in a procedure that interleaved both cues. Results show that while 2.5-year-olds were unable to use these cues when asked to compare and contrast, by 3.5 years old, children are beginning to be able to process these cues and use them to influence their verb extensions, and by 4.5 years, children are proficient at integrating multiple cues when learning and extending new verbs. Together these studies examine children's use of contrast in verb learning, a potentially important source of information that has been rarely studied.     

Learning the Relevance of Relevance and the Trouble with Truth: Evaluating Explanatory Relevance across Childhood

ABSTRACT

In four experiments, we investigate how the ability to detect irrelevant explanations develops. In Experiments 1 and 2, 4- to 8-year-olds and adults rated different types of explanations about “what makes cars go” individually, in the absence of a direct contrast. Each explanation was true and relevant (e.g., “Cars have engines that turn gasoline into power”), true and irrelevant (e.g., “Cars have radios that play music”), or a false statement that would be relevant if it were true (e.g., “Cars have rockets that speed them up”). Participants of all ages spontaneously indicated that false explanations were less helpful than relevant explanations. However, there was a developmental shift for irrelevant explanations: 4-year-olds only detected irrelevant explanations that did not involve internal features of cars (e.g., “Cars have parking lots that they park in”). Crucially, this shift between age 4 and 5 cannot be explained by 4-year-olds’ lack of knowledge since 4-year-olds correctly indicated that relevant explanations were more helpful than irrelevant feature explanations when given a direct contrast in Experiment 3. These results are further clarified in Experiment 4, in which we provided a different explanatory goal (“where to find cars”) and found that even young children have a nuanced understanding of explanatory relevance that is sensitive to differing explanatory goals. Together, these four experiments suggest an early-emerging ability to understand relevance, but a shift between age 4 and 5 in the ability to spontaneously use this understanding when evaluating individual explanations in isolation.     

Titchener at Leipzig

Twenty grade 3 and 20 grade 6 children were asked to identify a concealed target word (e.g., Banana) on the basis of four successively presented related cues (e.g., “It's a fruit” “It comes in a bunch”). Grade 6 children were more adept at using multiple cues to retrieve the target words than were grade 3 children, although practically all of the latter seemed to have the skills to do so. Younger children's failure to check spontaneously the consistency of answers to later presented cues with attributes indicated by the preceding cues appears to be the major source of their poor performance on retrieval tasks involving multiple cues.     

Reasoning about make-believe and hypothetical suppositions: Towards a theory of belief-contravening reasoning

The present study explores how suppositions which conflict with accepted beliefs are represented and reasoned about. Two studies test the predictions regarding the nature and developmental changes in children's ability to represent and reason about hypothetical or make-believe suppositions which violate their everyday knowledge and beliefs. In Study 1, 46 4th- and 5th-graders were introduced to a hand puppet, Freddy, who made claims inconsistent with generally accepted beliefs (e.g., “all dogs meow”) because he was pretending (Make-Believe Condition) or believed them (Hypothetical Condition). Participants were asked to think like Freddy and judge whether a conclusion (“There's a dog; does it meow?”) follows logically from the claim. In Study 2, 40 kindergarten (6-year-olds), 3rd–4th grade (10-year-olds), and college students were asked to represent belief contravening make-believe (pretend in a make-believe world that dogs meow) and hypothetical (imagine what the real world would be like if dogs meow) premises, evaluate conclusions of the premises (Rover is a dog, does Rover meow?) and make judgments about the attributes (growl, wag tail, purr, and eat mice) of the entity (a meowing dog) they created. The prediction that it would be easier to represent and reason from belief-contravening suppositions in the Make-Believe than Hypothetical conditions was confirmed in each study, although the two forms of reasoning were directly correlated (Study 2). The results were discussed in terms of the similarities (compartmentalization and integration) and differences (reconciliation) of processes involved in fancifully (make-believe) or seriously (hypothetical) representing and reasoning about belief-contravening suppositions.     

Accuracy and differentiation in social prediction: A developmental perspective1

Two studies examined the accuracy and differentiation of 4–5-yearolds‘, 8–9-year-olds’, and undergraduates' predictions of the preferences of peers and nonpeers. In Study 1 each subject was presented with separate arrays of snacks, meals, and activities depicted on cards and were asked to select their own preferences and the preferences of peers and nonpeers (“grown-ups” for the children, and “4- to 5-year-olds” for the undergraduates). In Study 2 each subject selected his or her own preference, the preference of peers, and the preferences of both older nonpeers (“grown-ups”) and younger nonpeers (“2-year-olds”). For all age groups, including 4–5-year-olds: (1) the preference predictions differentiated peers from nonpeers, as well as older nonpeers from younger nonpeers; (2) it was very rare for a subject to select his or her own preferences for the preference predictions of both peers and nonpeers. There were no consistent developmental differences either in the tendency to select one's own preferences when predicting the preferences of others or in the tendency to differentiate predictions for peers and nonpeers. In contrast, there was a clear developmental increase in predictive accuracy, with 4–5-year-olds being relatively inaccurate in predicting the preferences of nonpeers. The inadequacy of constructs such as “assumed similarity” and “egocentrism” as explanations for the general accuracy in predicting peers' preferences and the 4–5-year-olds' inaccuracy in predicting nonpeers' preferences is discussed. Possible alternative variables underlying developmental increases in judgmental accuracy, such as “social reference,”“self reference,” and “social category knowledge,” are then proposed.     

Children's response biases to results of object sharing

This study investigated whether 2- to 6-year-old children exhibit a response bias to questions pertaining to the results of sharing objects that should attract their interest. An experimenter distributed four objects between herself/himself and a child, equally or unequally (more to the child or more to the experimenter) and asked the child yes-no questions: “Is this okay?” and “Is this bad?” The results indicated that 2- and 3-year-olds exhibited a yes bias in all conditions, 4-year-olds exhibited a yes bias to the equal condition and to the unequal condition with more distributed to the child, and 5-year-olds exhibited a yes bias to both unequal conditions, whereas 6-year-olds did not show any response bias. Young preschoolers exhibited a yes bias regardless of questions and children may become able to say both “yes” and “no” appropriately to questions about object sharing after the age of six.     

Explaining the errors away: Young children forgive understandable semantic mistakes

Errors differ in degree of seriousness. We asked whether preschoolers would use the magnitude of an informant's errors to decide if that informant would be a good source of information later. Four- and 5-year-olds observed two informants incorrectly label familiar objects, but one informant's errors were closer to the correct answer than the other's (e.g., one referred to a comb as a brush and the other referred to the same comb as a thunderstorm). When informants had an unambiguous view of the objects, children could identify which informant was closer to being correct, but they did not favor novel labels the “closer” informant later provided. When the informants had an ambiguous view of the objects (e.g., only the handle of the comb was visible), children preferred the novel labels provided later by the “closer” informant. Preschoolers are willing to overlook semantic errors that are close to being correct, but only when there is an understandable reason for the speaker's errors.     

The role of testimony in young children's solution of a gravity-driven invisible displacement task

Previous research has shown that young children make a perseverative, gravity-oriented, error when asked to predict the final location of a ball dropped down an S-shaped opaque tube (Hood, 1995). We asked if providing children with verbal information concerning the role that the tubes play, in determining the ball's trajectory would improve their performance. Experiment 1 showed that performance of 3.5-year-olds improved after hearing testimony about the movement of the ball. Experiment 2 showed that the specific content of the testimony – rather than any accompanying non-verbal cues – helped children improve. These findings suggest that other people's testimony can be a valuable source of information when young children learn about the physical world. Indeed, under some circumstances children seem to benefit more from verbal than visual information. An educational implication is that it may sometimes be ineffective to focus on the impact of first-hand experience while marginalizing the role of verbal information.     

The Blicket Within: Preschoolers' Inferences About Insides and Causes

Four experiments examined children's inferences about the relation between objects' internal parts and their causal properties. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds recognized that objects with different internal parts had different causal properties, and those causal properties transferred if the internal part moved to another object. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds made inferences from an object's internal parts to its causal properties without being given verbal labels for objects or being shown that insides and causal properties covaried. Experiment 3 found that 4-year-olds chose an object with the same internal part over one with the same external property when asked which object had the same causal property as the target (which had both the internal part and external property). Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that 4-year-olds made similar inferences from causal properties to internal parts, but 3-year-olds relied more on objects' external perceptual appearance. These results suggest that by the age of 4, children have developed an understanding of a relation between an artifact's internal parts and its causal properties.