Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania.
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dev Psychol. 2021 Dec;57(12):2150-2164. doi: 10.1037/dev0001253.
Children have a powerful ability to track probabilistic information, but there are also situations in which young learners simply follow what another person says or does at the cost of obtaining rewards. This latter phenomenon, sometimes termed bias to trust in testimony, has primarily been studied in children preschool-age and younger, presumably because reasoning capacities improve with age. Less attention has been paid to situations in which testimony bias lingers-one possibility is that children revert to a testimony bias under conditions of uncertainty. Here, participants (4 to 9 years old) searched for rewards and received testimony that varied in reliability. We find support for testimony bias beyond preschool-age, particularly for uncertain testimony. Children were sensitive to trial-by-trial uncertainty (Experiment 1: N = 102, 59 boys, 43 girls; the sample included nine Hispanic/Latinx, 93 non-Hispanic/Latinx participants, of whom six were Black/African American, seven were Asian American, eight were multiracial, 77 were White, and four indicated "other" or did not respond), and with uncertainty defined as a one-time, unexpected change in the testimony (Experiment 3: N = 129; 68 boys, 61 girls; the sample included 12 Hispanic/Latinx, 117 non-Hispanic/Latinx [10 Black/African American, four Asian American, nine multiracial, 103 White, and three "other"]). However, the impact of the testimony bias decreased with age. These effects were specific to the testimony coming from another person as opposed to resulting from a computer glitch (Experiment 2: N = 89, 52 boys, 37 girls; five Hispanic/Latinx, 80 non-Hispanic/Latinx, of whom one was Black/African American, three were Asian American, 15 were multiracial, 66 were White, and four did not report race). Taken together, these experiments provide evidence of a disproportionate influence of testimony, even in children with more advanced reasoning skills. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
儿童具有强大的追踪概率信息的能力，但也存在这样的情况，即年幼的学习者只是简单地跟随他人的言行，而不考虑获得奖励。后一种现象，有时被称为对证词的信任偏见，主要在学龄前及更年幼的儿童中进行研究，大概是因为推理能力会随着年龄的增长而提高。而对于证词偏见持续存在的情况，则较少受到关注——一种可能性是，儿童在不确定的情况下会恢复到证词偏见。在这里，参与者（4 至 9 岁）寻找奖励，并收到可靠性不同的证词。我们发现，证词偏见不仅存在于学龄前，而且对于不确定的证词尤其如此。儿童对逐次试验的不确定性很敏感（实验 1：N = 102，59 名男孩，43 名女孩；样本包括 9 名西班牙裔/拉丁裔，93 名非西班牙裔/拉丁裔，其中 6 名是黑人/非裔美国人，7 名是亚裔美国人，8 名是多种族裔，77 名是白人，4 名表示“其他”或未回复），不确定性的定义是证词的一次性、意外变化（实验 3：N = 129；68 名男孩，61 名女孩；样本包括 12 名西班牙裔/拉丁裔，117 名非西班牙裔/拉丁裔[10 名黑人/非裔美国人，4 名亚裔美国人，9 名多种族裔，103 名白人，3 名“其他”]）。然而，证词偏见的影响随着年龄的增长而减小。这些效应是特定于来自他人的证词，而不是由于计算机故障而产生的（实验 2：N = 89，52 名男孩，37 名女孩；5 名西班牙裔/拉丁裔，80 名非西班牙裔/拉丁裔，其中 1 名是黑人/非裔美国人，3 名是亚裔美国人，15 名是多种族裔，66 名是白人，4 名未报告种族）。总的来说，这些实验提供了证词具有不成比例影响的证据，即使是在具有更高级推理能力的儿童中也是如此。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2021 APA，保留所有权利）。
