Baumann Anna-Elisabeth, Goldman Elizabeth J, Cobos Maria-Gracia M, Poulin-Dubois Diane
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8, Canada.
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8, Canada.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2024 Feb;238:105783. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105783. Epub 2023 Oct 5.
How young children learn from different informants has been widely studied. However, most studies investigate how children learn verbally conveyed information. Furthermore, most studies investigate how children learn from humans. This study sought to investigate how 3-year-old children learn from, and come to trust, a competent robot versus an incompetent human when competency is established using a pointing paradigm. During an induction phase, a robot informant pointed at a toy inside a transparent box, whereas a human pointed at an empty box. During the test phase, both agents pointed at opaque boxes. We found that young children asked the robot for help to locate a hidden toy more than the human (ask questions) and correctly identified the robot to be accurate (judgment questions). However, children equally endorsed the locations pointed at by both the robot and the human (endorse questions). This suggests that 3-year-olds are sensitive to the epistemic characteristics of the informant even when its displayed social properties are minimal.
幼儿如何从不同的信息提供者那里学习，这一问题已得到广泛研究。然而，大多数研究探讨的是儿童如何学习通过语言传达的信息。此外，大多数研究考察的是儿童如何从人类那里学习。本研究旨在探究3岁儿童在通过指向范式确立能力的情况下，如何从一个能干的机器人和一个无能的人类那里学习并开始信任他们。在诱导阶段，机器人信息提供者指向一个透明盒子里的玩具，而人类指向一个空盒子。在测试阶段，两个信息提供者都指向不透明的盒子。我们发现，幼儿向机器人寻求帮助以找到隐藏玩具的次数比向人类寻求帮助的次数更多（提问问题），并且能正确地认定机器人是准确的（判断问题）。然而，儿童对机器人和人类所指的位置给予了同样的认可（认可问题）。这表明，即使信息提供者所展现的社会属性极少，3岁儿童也能对其认知特征保持敏感。
