Cognitive development, culture, and conversation: comments on Harris and Koenig's "truth in testimony: how children learn about science and religion"

Cognitive Foundations of Learning from Testimony

Humans acquire much of their knowledge from the testimony of other people. An understanding of the way that information can be conveyed via gesture and vocalization is present in infancy. Thus, infants seek information from well-informed interlocutors, supply information to the ignorant, and make sense of communicative acts that they observe from a third-party perspective. This basic understanding is refined in the course of development. As they age, children's reasoning about testimony increasingly reflects an ability not just to detect imperfect or inaccurate claims but also to assess what inferences may or may not be drawn about informants given their particular situation. Children also attend to the broader characteristics of particular informants-their group membership, personality characteristics, and agreement or disagreement with other potential informants. When presented with unexpected or counterintuitive testimony, children are prone to set aside their own prior convictions, but they may sometimes defer to informants for inherently social reasons.

Young Children Prefer and Remember Satisfying Explanations

Research with preschool children shows that explanations are important to them in that they actively seek explanations in their conversations with adults. But, what sorts of explanations do they prefer, and what, if anything, do young children learn from the explanations they receive? Following a preliminary study with adults (N=67) to establish materials for use with children, we addressed this question using a semi-naturalistic methodology. 4- and 5-year-olds (N=69) were dissatisfied when receiving non-explanations to their explanatory questions, but satisfied when receiving explanations, and their satisfaction varied appropriately across several levels of explanatory information. Moreover, using recall as a measure of learning, whereas children typically failed to recall non-explanations, their recall of explanatory information was consistently high and also varied appropriately across differing levels of information provided. These results confirm that children not only actively seek informative explanations in their everyday conversational interactions with adults, they selectively retain the answers they receive.

Knowing when to doubt: developing a critical stance when learning from others

Children may be biased toward accepting information as true, but the fact remains that children are exposed to misinformation from many sources, and mastering the intricacies of doubt is necessary. The current article examines this issue, focusing on understanding developmental changes and consistencies in children's ability to take a critical stance toward information. Research reviewed includes studies of children's ability to detect ignorance, inaccuracy, incompetence, deception, and distortion. Particular emphasis is placed on what this research indicates about how children are reasoning about when to trust and when to doubt. The remainder of the article proposes a framework to evaluate preexisting research and encourage further research, closing with a discussion of several other overarching questions that should be considered to develop a model to explain developmental, individual, and situational differences in children's ability to evaluate information.

Gravity, God and ghosts? Parents’ beliefs in science, religion, and the paranormal and the encouragement of beliefs in their children

Using a questionnaire, the present study examined parents’ beliefs regarding the development of children’s beliefs about science, religion, and the paranormal. The study also investigated parental encouragement of children’s beliefs, as well as parents’ own beliefs within these domains. Results revealed that parents make distinctions between domains in terms of (a) the importance and timing of beliefs in children’s lives, (b) their own beliefs, and (c) what they encourage their children to believe. The results also indicated that parents’ beliefs were often consistent with the beliefs, they encouraged in their children. These findings suggest that parental beliefs provide an important contextual background for children’s development.

Concepts and folk theories

Human cognition is characterized by enormous variability and structured by universal psychological constraints. The focus of this chapter is on the development of knowledge acquisition because it provides important insight into how the mind interprets new information and constructs new ways of understanding. We propose that mental content can be productively approached by examining the intuitive causal explanatory "theories" that people construct to explain, interpret, and intervene on the world around them, including theories of mind, of biology, or of physics. A substantial amount of research in cognitive developmental psychology supports the integral role of intuitive theories in human learning and provides evidence that they structure, constrain, and guide the development of human cognition.

Learning from others: children's construction of concepts

Much of children's knowledge is derived not from their direct experiences with the environment but rather from the input of others. However, until recently, the focus in studies of concept development was primarily on children's knowledge, with relatively little attention paid to the nature of the input. The past 10 years have seen an important shift in focus. This article reviews this approach, by examining the nature of the input and the nature of the learner, to shed light on early conceptual learning. These findings argue against the simple notion that conceptual development is either supplied by the environment or innately specified, and instead demonstrate how the two work together. The implications for how children reconcile competing belief systems are also discussed.