When children can explain why they believe a claim, they suggest better empirical tests for those claimsuse asterix (*) to get italics

Tone K. Hermansen, Kamilla F. Mathisen, Samuel RonfardPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

2024

<p>Hearing about surprising phenomena triggers exploration, even in young children. This exploration increases and changes with age. It becomes more targeted and efficient with children around 6-years-old clearly exploring with the intent to verify what they have been told. What underlies this development? In this study, we tested the hypothesis that children’s ability to reflect on the causes of their uncertainty about a surprising claim allows them to better target their empirical investigation of that claim—and that this ability increases with age. To test this developmental account, we assigned 4-7-year-old children (N = 174, Mage = 68.77 months, Range: 48-84 months, 52.87% girls, 47.13% boys) to one of two conditions: a prompted and an unprompted condition. In each condition, children witnessed a series of vignettes where an adult presented them with a surprising claim about an object. Children were then asked whether they thought the claim was true or not, and how certain or uncertain they were in that belief. Then, in the prompted condition, children were asked why they felt that way. Finally, in both conditions, children were asked to recommend a course of action to determine whether the adult’s claim was true or not. As predicted, the findings from this study, revealed that older children are more likely to justify their beliefs than younger children, and are also more likely to suggest targeted empirical tests for a claim—tests that provide the needed evidence to confirm or disconfirm the truth of a claim. However, although our confirmatory analyses showed that prompting children to reflect on the causes of their uncertainty about a claim did not directly increase the likelihood that they suggested an efficient test, our exploratory analyses showed that the ability to provide a plausible reason for their beliefs did—even when controlling for their ability to reason scientifically. This provides support for the notion that developments in children’s reasoning about their beliefs drive changes in their empirical evaluation of those beliefs.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Information seeking, Uncertainty reasoning, Testing claims, Exploration

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Social sciences

Amy Masnick suggested: Christopher Osterhaus christopher.osterhaus@uni-vechta.de , Amy Masnick suggested: Susanne Koerber susanne.koerber@ph-freiburg.de

e.g. John Doe john@doe.com

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2024-06-19 09:39:15

Chris Chambers