Dore Rebecca A, Woolley Jacqueline, Nissel Jenny, Hixon John G
The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2023 Jun;41(2):117-127. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12437. Epub 2022 Nov 17.
Children learn about much of the world through testimony and may hear explicit belief statements (e.g., "I believe in God" or "climate change is real") about entities whose existence is controversial. Prior research has shown that these statements, when spoken by a parent, influence children's beliefs about the reality status of the entity and their beliefs about societal consensus surrounding that reality status, in contrast to statements that only imply belief (e.g., "God lives in heaven"; Dore et al., 2019, Journal of Cognition and Development, 20, 35), suggesting that children are attuned to the nature of parental statements about reality. In the current study, we tested whether explicit versus implicit belief statements from strangers differentially affect children's beliefs. We followed procedures by Dore et al. (2019, Journal of Cognition and Development, 20, 35) but used strangers to provide testimony rather than parents. Results showed that explicit belief statements from strangers did not influence children's beliefs. This lack of an effect of explicit belief statements relative to implicit ones suggests that, despite being attuned to these statements when spoken by parents, children may not be attuned to explicit statements about reality that they hear from strangers. Although even very young children often learn words and other facts from unfamiliar speakers, these findings suggest that nuances perceived in parent speech about reality may not be picked up in the speech of strangers.
儿童通过他人的讲述了解世界的很多方面，可能会听到关于存在争议的实体的明确信念陈述（例如，“我相信上帝”或“气候变化是真实存在的”）。先前的研究表明，当这些陈述由父母说出时，会影响孩子对该实体现实状况的信念以及他们对围绕该现实状况的社会共识的信念，这与仅暗示信念的陈述（例如，“上帝住在天堂”；多尔等人，《认知与发展杂志》，2019年，第20卷，第35页）形成对比，这表明孩子会关注父母关于现实的陈述的性质。在当前的研究中，我们测试了陌生人的明确信念陈述与隐含信念陈述是否会对孩子的信念产生不同影响。我们遵循了多尔等人（《认知与发展杂志》，2019年，第20卷，第35页）的程序，但让陌生人提供讲述而非父母。结果表明，陌生人的明确信念陈述并未影响孩子的信念。相对于隐含陈述，明确信念陈述缺乏这种影响，这表明，尽管孩子会关注父母说出的这些陈述，但他们可能不会关注从陌生人那里听到的关于现实的明确陈述。尽管即使是非常小的孩子也经常从不熟悉的说话者那里学习单词和其他事实，但这些发现表明，孩子可能无法从陌生人的话语中捕捉到父母话语中关于现实的细微差别。
