Oxford Brookes University, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane, Oxford OX3 0BP, United Kingdom.
Psychol Sci. 2011 Oct;22(10):1250-3. doi: 10.1177/0956797611416998. Epub 2011 Aug 31.
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.
最近的证据表明，儿童在社会学习中具有选择性，他们更喜欢向之前准确的说话者学习，而不是向之前不准确的说话者学习。我们研究了儿童在评估说话者的可靠性时是否会考虑说话者如何获得之前的准确性。在研究 1 中，当面对两个准确的信息提供者时，4 岁和 5 岁的儿童（而不是 3 岁的儿童）更有可能从之前独立给出答案的信息提供者那里寻求新信息，而不是从总是依赖第三方帮助的信息提供者那里寻求新信息。同样，在研究 2 中，4 岁的儿童更有可能信任独立信息提供者的证言，而不是依赖辅助信息提供者的证言。我们的研究结果表明，当儿童长到 4 岁左右时，他们的选择性信任不仅基于信息提供者过去的准确性，还扩展到更复杂的选择性，能够区分真正有知识的信息提供者和仅仅准确但可能不可靠的信息提供者。
