Measuring Children's Trust in Testimony

Overview

Source: Laboratories of Judith Danovitch and Nicholaus Noles—University of Louisville

How does a person learn about the world around them? One way is through direct observation and exploration. However, not every piece of information can be observed firsthand. Instead, a person must often rely on other people as information sources. This is particularly true for children who have so many questions about the world around them, yet have limited means of accessing the answers. Thus, children must rely on other people to provide answers to their questions.

There is a popular viewpoint that children are gullible and that they believe everything they hear. However, recent research has shown this is not the case. Children as young as age 3 evaluate what other people say and show selective trust in other people’s testimony. Children pay attention to and use their knowledge about an individual’s prior behavior and characteristics to judge whether that individual is a trustworthy informational source.

This video demonstrates how to measure children’s trust in testimony based on methods developed by Birch, Vauthier, and Bloom¹ and Koenig, Clement, and Harris.²

Procedure

Recruit 3- and 4-year-old children who have normal vision and hearing. For the purposes of this demonstration, only one child is tested. Larger sample sizes are recommended when conducting any experiments.

1. Gather the necessary materials.

Obtain two hand puppets clearly distinguishable from each other. In this demonstration, use two male puppets with different facial features and clothing.
Gather four common objects familiar to young children. In this demonstration, u

Results

Researchers tested 20 3-year-old and 20 4-year-old children and found that children showed greater trust in the accurate puppet. Children were 100% accurate naming the familiar objects in the confirmation phase, suggesting they were capable of recognizing which puppet had been accurate in the history phase. The researchers found that children in both age groups chose the objects labeled by the accurate puppet at rates significantly higher than chance (75% of the time for 3-year-olds and 70% of the time for 4-year-olds; <

Application and Summary

The finding that children as young as age 3 show selective trust in information sources has important implications for how children learn about a wide range of topics. For example, when learning about the concepts underlying scientific fields, such as chemistry and biology, children typically cannot observe facts, like “There is oxygen in the air” or “Living things contain DNA,” themselves. Instead, they must rely on the testimony of other people, such as parents and teachers, and determine whethe

References

Birch, S. A., Vauthier, S. A., & Bloom, P. Three- and four-year-olds spontaneously use others’ past performance to guide their learning. Cognition. 107, 1018–1034 (2008).
Koenig, M. A., Clément, F., & Harris, P. L. Trust in testimony: Children’s use of true and false statements. Psychological Science. 15, 694–698 (2004).
Koenig, M. A., & Harris, P. L. Preschoolers mistrust ignorant and inaccurate speakers. Child Development. 76 (6), 1261-1277 (2005).
Lutz, D. J., & Keil, F. C. Early understanding of the division of cognitive labor. Child Development. 73 (4), 1073-1084 (2002).