Testing What You’re Told: Young Children’s Empirical Investigation of a Surprising Claim

References

• Astington, J. W., Pelletier, J., & Homer, B. (2002). Theory of mind and epistemological development: The relation between children’s second-order false-belief understanding and their ability to reason about evidence. New Ideas in Psychology, 20, 131–144.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Bonawitz, E. B., van Schijndel, T. J., Friel, D., & Schulz, L. (2012). Children balance theories and evidence in exploration, explanation, and learning. Cognitive Psychology, 64, 215–234. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2011.12.002
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Bridgers, S., Buchsbaum, D., Seiver, E., Griffiths, T. L., & Gopnik, A. (2015). Children’s causal inferences from conflicting testimony and observations. Developmental Psychology, 52, 9–18. doi:10.1037/a0039830
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Chan, C. C., & Tardif, T. (2013). Knowing better: The role of prior knowledge and culture in trust in testimony. Developmental Psychology, 49, 591–601. doi:10.1037/a0031336
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Chen, X., & French, D. C. (2008). Children’s social competence in cultural context. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 591–616. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093606
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Chen, Z., & Klahr, D. (1999). All other things being equal: Acquisition and transfer of the control of variables strategy. Child Development, 70, 1098–1120. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00081
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Cook, C., Goodman, N. D., & Schulz, L. E. (2011). Where science starts: Spontaneous experiments in preschoolers’ exploratory play. Cognition, 120, 341–349. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2011.03.003
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Corriveau, K. H., & Harris, P. L. (2010). Preschoolers (sometimes) defer to the majority when making simple perceptual judgments. Developmental Psychology, 26, 437–445. doi:10.1037/a0017553
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Corriveau, K. H., Kim, E., Song, G., & Harris, P. L. (2013). Young children’s deference to a majority varies by culture. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 13, 367–381. doi:10.1163/15685373-12342099
   Google Scholar
• DiYanni, C. J., Corriveau, K. H., Kurkul, K., Nasrini, J., & Nini, D. (2015). The role of consensus and culture in children’s imitation of inefficient actions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 137, 99–110. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2015.04.004
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Feldman, S. (2003). Enforcing social conformity: A theory of authoritarianism. Political Psychology, 24, 41–74.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Feldman, S., & Stenner, K. (1997). Perceived threat and authoritarianism. Political Psychology, 4, 741–770.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Harris, P. L., & Corriveau, K. H. (2013). Judging for yourself vs. listening to others: Conformity revisited. In M. R. Banaji & S. A. Gelman (Eds.), Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us (pp. 230-234). New York: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Harris, P. L., Koenig, M. A., Corriveau, K. H., & Jaswal, V. K. (2018). Cognitive foundations of learning from testimony. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 251–273. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011710
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Hodges, B. H., & Geyer, A. L. (2006). A nonconformist account of the Asch experiments: Values, pragmatics and moral dilemmas. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 2–19.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Jaswal, V. K. (2010). Believing what you’re told: Young children’s trust in unexpected testimony about the physical world. Cognitive Psychology, 61, 248–272. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2010.06.002.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Lane, J. D. (2018). Children’s belief in counter-intuitive and counterperceptual messages. Child Development Perspectives, 12, 247–252.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Lane, J. D., & Harris, P. L. (2014). Confronting, representing, and believing counter-intuitive concepts: Navigating the natural and the supernatural. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 144–160. doi:10.1177/1745691613518078
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Lane, J. D., Harris, P. L., Gelman, S. A., & Wellman, H. M. (2014). More than meets the eye: Young children’s trust in claims that defy their perceptions. Developmental Psychology, 50, 865–871. doi:10.1037/a0034291
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Li, P. H., Pesch, A., & Koenig, M. (2020). The sense of obligation in children’s testimonial learning. commentary on Tomasello’s “the moral psychology of obligation”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, e76. doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002486.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Lin, C., & Fu, V. R. (1990). A comparison of child-rearing practices among Chinese, immigrant Chinese, and Caucasian-American parents. Child Development, 61, 429–433.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Mills, C. M., Sands, K. R., Rowles, S. P., & Campbell, I. L. (2019). “I want to know more!”: Children are sensitive to explanation quality when exploring new information. Cognitive Science, 43, e12706.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Packer, D. J. (2008). On being both with us and against us: A normative conflict model of dissent in social groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12, 20–72.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Park, H., & Lau, A. S. (2016). Socioeconomic status and parenting priorities: Child independence and obedience around the world. Journal of Marriage and Family, 78, 43–59. doi:10.1111/jomf.12247
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Reifen Tagar, M., Federico, C. M., Lyons, K. E., Ludeke, S., & Koenig, M. A. (2014). Heralding the authoritarian? Orientation toward authority in early childhood. Psychological Science, 25, 883–892. doi:10.1177/0956797613516470
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Ronfard, S., Chen, E. E., & Harris, P. L. (2018). The emergence of the empirical stance: Children’s testing of counter-intuitive claims. Developmental Psychology, 54, 482–493. doi:10.1037/dev0000455
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Ronfard, S., Ünlütabak, B., Bazhydai, M., Nicolopoulou, A., & Harris, P. L. (2020). Preschoolers in Belarus and Turkey accept but do not empirically verify an adult’s counter-intuitive claim. International Journal of Behavioral Development. doi:10.1177/0165025420905344
   Google Scholar
• Ronfard, S., Zambrana, I. M., Hermansen, T. K., & Kelemen, D. (2018). Question-asking in childhood: A review of the literature and a framework for understanding its development. Developmental Review, 49, 101–120. doi:10.1016/j.dr.2018.05.002
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Schulz, L. E. (2012). The origins of inquiry: Inductive inference and exploration in early childhood. Trends in Cognitive Science, 16, 382–389.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Shtulman, A., & Walker, C. (2020). Developing an understanding of science. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 2. doi:10.1146/annurev-devpsych-060320-092346
   Google Scholar
• Smith, C., Carey, S., & Wiser, M. (1985). On differentiation: A case study of the development of the concepts of size, weight, and density. Cognition, 21, 177–237. doi:10.1016/00100277(85)90025-3
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Stenner, K. (2005). The authoritarian dynamic. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Wang, Z., Williamson, R. A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2015). Imitation as a mechanism in cognitive development: A cross-cultural investigation of 4-year-old children’s rule learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 562. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00562.
   Google Scholar
• Woolley, J. D., & Ghossainy, M. (2013). Revisiting the fantasy-reality distinction: Children as naïve skeptics. Child Development, 84, 1497–1510.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar