How do children learn from social constructivism?
- proposed by Vygotsky
- explained that children are curious explorers, but the best way children learn is through the collaboration between the child and more knowledgeable members of society
- more knowledgeable members of society offer scaffolding-offer tailored by modelling activities ad providing verbal instructions
Piaget saw the child as an “autodidact”, what does this mean?
They are self taught. Children learn primarily from their own exploration and active interpretation of the data that they make themselves gather
what is testimony?
information communicated via assertions (in contrast to information we gain by sense experience)
what do we rely on testimony for?
- for general knowledge (science, history, politics)
- for specific information (train times, weather outlook)
- for culture norms and rules (keep clothes on in public)
- for personal information (our date of birth)
what are the 3 types of learning from others?
- formal: explicit teaching
- informal: everyday dialogue with adults, siblings and peers, asking questions, imitation, overhearing
- indirectly: through books, TV and the internet
How do children learn from others?
- who and what to approach/avoid
- what things are called
- what timings are for
- how to categorise correclty
what are the limitations of learning from others?
- testimony nor always reliable
- some sources more credible than others
what is Epistemic vigilance? (Sperber et al., 2010)
- evaluating the credibility of the information source and the plausibility of the claims, and calibrate trust in testimony accordingly
- it is needed to achieve effective social learning
how do we evaluate testimony using competence and benevolence
whether someone is competent to provide info and a good intentions as opposed to wanting to deceive us
Historical perspective o whether children trust everything we tell them?
- “..a disposition to confide in the veracity of others and to believe what they tell us…It is unlimited in children” (Reid, 1764)
- Bertrand Russell claimed that: “Doubt, suspense of judgment and disbelief all seem later and more complex than a wholly unreflecting assent” (Russell, 1921).
- “A child learns there are reliable and unreliable informants much later than it learns the facts which are told it” (Wittgenstein, 1969).
recent perspective o whether children trust everything we tell them?
- “Children are especially credulous, especially gullible, especially prone toward acceptance and belief – as if they accepted as effortlessly as they comprehended but had yet to master the intricacies of doubt.” (Gilbert, 1991)
- According to Dawkins, credulity is adaptive: “It is easy to see why natural selection – the survival of the fittest – might penalize an experimental and skeptical turn of mind and favour simple credulity in children.” (Dawkins, 1995)
eye scepticism in children
- Rejecting blatantly false claims
- From 16 months infants reject false labels (Koenig & Echols, 2003; Pea, 1980), for example a ball and a hat and the experimenter labelling them the wrong way around
- 3-4 year-olds reject claims that are inconsistent with their own perceptual judgement (Clement et al., 2004), experiementer looks in box and says there is a blue and red pom pom when it’s actually 2 yellow ones. Children disagree with the experimenter
Trusting your own eyes vs. testimony, Tamis-Lemonda et al., (2008)
- pitted perceptual cues and social cues
- mums encouraged children to walk down risky slopes and discouraged them to walk down safe slopes
- 18mo’s were found to ignore advice and relied on perceptual information
- children relied on mums advice when they could not assess risk
are children biased to believe things?
- 2 and 3 yr-olds accept labels conflicting with own perceptions (Jaswal & Markman, 2007)
- 4 yr-olds more likely to accept conflicting labels if given additional information suggesting it’s an unfamiliar subtype of that category: “This is a Moroccan bird” (Jaswal, 2004)
- 6 and 8 yr-olds more likely to accept conflicting labels when stimuli is ambiguous (Chan & Tardiff, 2013)
Role of prior knowledge in assessing unexpected testimony
some studies demonstrate role of intuition/prior knowledge when children making trust judgements:
- Children compare other people’s testimony to their existing knowledge
- When own knowledge base is strong (in unambiguous situations) they are more likely to stick with own beliefs
- When own knowledge base is weak (in ambiguous situations) they are more likely to accept implausible claims
Do children take into account an informant’s past reliability? Jaswal et al. (2010)
-sticker hidden under one of two cups
- the experimenter told them where the sticker is but told they were tricky
- if they lift the correct cup they got a sticker
- if they picked the wrong cup the experimenter got the sticker
- the experimenter always said the wrong location
- tested if they learnt to not trust the experimenter
- found 3 yr-olds continued to believe the deceptive actor across 8 trials.
Why are children not always epistemically vigilant?
cognitive skills supporting development of scepticism:
1. Responding sceptically required inhibiting the normality appropriate expectations that way people say os true.
2. Responding sceptically requires awareness that others may deceive (e.g. role of theory of mind)
what are some signs of selective trust?
Underlying abilities
1. Sensitivity to appropriate cues about individuals’ competence or honesty e.g. mistakes/past accuracy
2. Appreciate that prior competence/honesty is linked to future reliability
3. Keep track of person-specific information about reliability to guide selective learning from reliable informants
Choosing between informants and signs of selective trust, Koenig, Clement & Harris (2004)
- 3-4 year-olds use informants’ past accuracy to assess the reliability of their current or future testimony
- Prefer to: seek help, accept new information
- From previously accurate rather than inaccurate person
- In order to test children’s selective uptake of new knowledge, child is presented with information about novel objects: E.g. Labels – non words that sound like real words
accuracy evaluation for children
- Is children’s ability to use past accuracy as a reliability cue limited to situations where a speaker is always right vs. always wrong?
- At 4 yrs children also sensitive to relative frequency of errors speakers make (Pasquini et al., 2007)
- At 3 yrs children only differentiated between speakers when one person was 100% right
- Growing ability to differentiate on basis of relative error size i.e. graded evaluation on basis of error size by evaluating their semantic content (Einav & Robinson, 2010)
Children are sensitive to graded differences in speakers’ accuracy 2
- Both presented incorrect info but one more serious errors
- Bee- it’s a mistake but still an animal so closer to the truth
- cat-its a completely different animal
- when size errr was more quantifiable then so closer to real amount then even 4-5 year olds were selective with person whose answer they trust.
Vanderbilt et al. (2014) Object labelling task
- When they have the option of learning novel information from either a previously accurate or inaccurate speaker, 3 & 4 yos accept claim of accurate speaker
- But they are willing to trust the testimony of a single informant, regardless of whether s/he had previously been reliable!
- Suggesting that children require conflicting testimony from a better source in order to demonstrate selective trust
what are some examples of informant variables that have been found to influence children’s trust?
- age
- attractiveness
- benevolence
- familiarity
- expertise
- accent
- confidence
- gender
- group membership
- attire
- consensus
