What children know about the source of their knowledge without reporting it as the source

The effect of disagreement on children's source memory performance

Source representations play a role both in the formation of individual beliefs as well as in the social transmission of such beliefs. Both of these functions suggest that source information should be particularly useful in the context of interpersonal disagreement. Three experiments with an identical design (one original study and two replications) with 3- to 4-year-old-children (N = 100) assessed whether children's source memory performance would improve in the face of disagreement and whether such an effect interacts with different types of sources (first- vs. second-hand). In a 2 x 2 repeated-measures design, children found out about the contents of a container either by looking inside or being told (IV1). Then they were questioned about the contents of the container by an interlocutor puppet who either agreed or disagreed with their answer (IV2). We measured children's source memory performance in response to a free recall question (DV1) followed by a forced-choice question (DV2). Four-year-olds (but not three-year-olds) performed better in response to the free recall source memory question (but not the forced-choice question) when their interlocutor had disagreed with them compared to when it had agreed with them. Children were also better at recalling 'having been told' than 'having seen'. These results demonstrate that by four years of age, source memory capacities are sensitive to the communicative context of assertions and serve social functions.

The flexibility of early memories: Limited reevaluation of action steps in 2-year-old infants

This study investigated the flexibility of 2-year-old infants' retrieval and reenactment processes. In a delayed imitation paradigm, children were exposed to a constraint change (implemented by the distance of a target object) affecting the relevance of using a tool to obtain a goal (reach the object). In Experiment 1, during demonstration in the first session the tool was either relevant or irrelevant for reaching the goal, and 1 week later it either lost or gained its relevance, respectively. We found that when the tool became unnecessary (relevant to irrelevant change), children used it somewhat less than before and used it less compared with when the tool's relevance remained the same (relevant to relevant, no change). When the tool became necessary after a constraint change (irrelevant to relevant change), children used the tool more than before, but not as much as in the Relevant-Relevant control condition. In Experiment 2, the timing of the constraint change (immediate or delayed) was varied in a modified version of the Irrelevant-Relevant condition, where practice before the constraint change was omitted. Children were not significantly more flexible in the immediate condition than in the delayed condition, and comparisons with Experiment 1 showed that performance did not change if we omitted the practice before the change. These results indicate that although 2-year-olds show considerable mnemonic performance, they face difficulties in adapting to constraint changes. We propose that this inflexibility may stem from infants' inability to revise their evaluations formed in previous events due to their immature episodic memory capacities.

Witnessing, Remembering, and Testifying: Why the Past Is Special for Human Beings

The past is undeniably special for human beings. To a large extent, both individuals and collectives define themselves through history. Moreover, humans seem to have a special way of cognitively representing the past: episodic memory. As opposed to other ways of representing knowledge, remembering the past in episodic memory brings with it the ability to become a witness. Episodic memory allows us to determine what of our knowledge about the past comes from our own experience and thereby what parts of the past we can give testimony about. In this article, we aim to give an account of the special status of the past by asking why humans have developed the ability to give testimony about it. We argue that the past is special for human beings because it is regularly, and often principally, the only thing that can determine present social realities such as commitments, entitlements, and obligations. Because the social effects of the past often do not leave physical traces behind, remembering the past and the ability to bear testimony it brings is necessary for coordinating social realities with other individuals.

What is it to remember?

In response to the commentaries, we clarify and defend our characterization of both the nature and function of episodic memory. Regarding the nature of episodic memory, we extend the distinction between event and episodic memory and discuss the relational role of episodic memory. We also address arguments against our characterization of autonoesis and argue that, while self-referential, it needs to be distinguished from an agentive notion of self. Regarding the function of episodic memory, we review arguments about the relation between future mental time travel and memory veridicality; clarify the relation between autonoesis, veridicality, and confidence; and finally discuss the role of episodic memory in diachronic commitments.

Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory

Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential, 'autonoetic' character. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms, and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken towards an event simulation. On this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentational format and should not be equated with beliefs about the past. Instead, empirical findings suggest that the contents of human episodic memory are often constructed in the service of the explicit justification of such beliefs. Existing accounts of episodic memory function that have focused on explaining its constructive character through its role in 'future-oriented mental time travel' neither do justice to its capacity to ground veridical beliefs about the past nor to its representational format. We provide an account of the metarepresentational structure of episodic memory in terms of its role in communicative interaction. The generative nature of recollection allows us to represent and communicate the reasons for why we hold certain beliefs about the past. In this process, autonoesis corresponds to the capacity to determine when and how to assert epistemic authority in making claims about the past. A domain where such claims are indispensable are human social engagements. Such engagements commonly require the justification of entitlements and obligations, which is often possible only by explicit reference to specific past events.

Early testimonial learning: monitoring speech acts and speakers

Testimony provides children with a rich source of knowledge about the world and the people in it. However, testimony is not guaranteed to be veridical, and speakers vary greatly in both knowledge and intent. In this chapter, we argue that children encounter two primary types of conflicts when learning from speakers: conflicts of knowledge and conflicts of interest. We review recent research on children's selective trust in testimony and propose two distinct mechanisms supporting early epistemic vigilance in response to the conflicts associated with speakers. The first section of the chapter focuses on the mechanism of coherence checking, which occurs during the process of message comprehension and facilitates children's comparison of information communicated through testimony to their prior knowledge, alerting them to inaccurate, inconsistent, irrational, and implausible messages. The second section focuses on source-monitoring processes. When children lack relevant prior knowledge with which to evaluate testimonial messages, they monitor speakers themselves for evidence of competence and morality, attending to cues such as confidence, consensus, access to information, prosocial and antisocial behavior, and group membership.

First-hand sensory experience plays a limited role in children's early understanding of seeing and hearing as sources of knowledge: evidence from typically hearing and deaf children

One early-developing component of theory of mind is an understanding of the link between sensory perception and knowledge formation. We know little about the extent to which children's first-hand sensory experiences drive the development of this understanding, as most tasks capturing this early understanding target vision, with less attention paid to the other senses. In this study, 64 typically hearing children (Mage  = 4.0 years) and 21 orally educated deaf children (Mage  = 5.44 years) were asked to identify which of two informants knew the identity of a toy animal when each had differing perceptual access to the animal. In the 'seeing' condition, one informant saw the animal and the other did not; in the 'hearing' condition, one informant heard the animal and the other did not. For both hearing and deaf children, there was no difference between performance on hearing and seeing trials, but deaf children were delayed in both conditions. Further, within both the hearing and deaf groups, older children outperformed younger children on these tasks, indicating that there is a developmental progression. Taken together, the pattern of results suggests that experiences other than first-hand sensory experiences drive children's developing understanding that sensory perception is associated with knowledge.

The role of culture and language in avoiding misinformation: pilot findings

In two pilot studies, we investigate the possibility that patterns in our linguistic environment affect the likelihood of accepting misinformation. Turkish, which marks its verbs for the source of a speaker's evidence (first-hand perception vs. hearsay), was contrasted with English which does not mark its verbs but which, to signal strength of evidence, must employ optional lexical marking. In the first pilot study, Turkish adults were shown to be affected by that language's obligatory evidential markings: their free recall for details of the events changed as a function of the type of the tense-aspect marker in use, and strong evidential markers led to increased levels of suggestibility when employed with misleading questions. In the second pilot study, Turkish- and English-speaking children were shown to be differentially suggestible depending on combinations of evidential markers in the story presented and the evidential marker employed in the misinformation subsequently provided. Together, these two pilot studies show promise in this area of research, which has been ignored by the forensic community and yet would seem to be relevant when interviewing, taking statements, and giving testimony in cross-linguistic settings.

When being right is not enough: four-year-olds distinguish knowledgeable informants from merely accurate informants

Recent evidence demonstrates that children are selective in their social learning, preferring to learn from a previously accurate speaker than from a previously inaccurate one. We examined whether children assessing speakers' reliability take into account how speakers achieved their prior accuracy. In Study 1, when faced with two accurate informants, 4- and 5-year-olds (but not 3-year-olds) were more likely to seek novel information from an informant who had previously given the answers unaided than from an informant who had always relied on help from a third party. Similarly, in Study 2, 4-year-olds were more likely to trust the testimony of an unaided informant over the testimony provided by an assisted informant. Our results indicate that when children reach around 4 years of age, their selective trust extends beyond simple generalizations based on informants' past accuracy to a more sophisticated selectivity that distinguishes between truly knowledgeable informants and merely accurate informants who may not be reliable in the long term.