When learners are faced with evaluating someone's claims - even for the first time - they might already possess some knowledge of that informant, for example from other people's claims about that person's honesty or dishonesty. How do children combine such information about an informant's typical behavior with their first-hand experiences with that informant, to guide their epistemic trust? This study is designed to answer this question.
Built with Experiment
We asked children aged 4-to 8-years-old to play eleven rounds of a find-the-sticker game. For each round, an informant looked into two cups and made a claim about which cup held a sticker. At the end of each round, children guessed the sticker's location, and then the sticker's actual location was revealed. The informant provided inaccurate information on the first 5 trials and then provided accurate information for the remaining 6 trials. This single informant multi-trial design allows us to track changes in children's trust in the informant over time. Over the first 5 trials we could examine the rate at which children lost trust in the informant. Over the last 6 trials we could examine the rate at which children regained trust in the informant as the informant provided consistently accurate information. In order to examine how information about the informant's honesty shapes the trajectory of children's trust over time, prior to playing the game, children were randomly assigned to receive no information about the informant or received information that the informant they would be playing with was honest or dishonest. We asked children to rate the informant's honesty and strength prior to receiving this information, after receiving this information, and at the end of the study after interacting with the informant.
Gorilla Open Materials Attribution-NonCommerical Research-Only
Fully open! Access by URL and searchable from the Open Materials search page
