Epistemic trust: modeling children’s reasoning about others’ knowledge and intent

Abstract

A core assumption of many theories of development is that children can learn indirectly from other people. However, indirect experience (or testimony) is not constrained to provide veridical information. As a result, if children are to capitalize on this source of knowledge, they must be able to infer who is trustworthy and who is not. How might a learner make such inferences while at the same time learning about the world? What biases, if any, might children bring to this problem? We address these questions with a computational model of epistemic trust in which learners reason about the helpfulness and knowledgeability of an informant. We show that the model captures the competencies shown by young children in four areas: (1) using informants’ accuracy to infer how much to trust them; (2) using informants’ recent accuracy to overcome effects of familiarity; (3) inferring trust based on consensus among informants; and (4) using information about mal‐intent to decide not to trust. The model also explains developmental changes in performance between 3 and 4 years of age as a result of changing default assumptions about the helpfulness of other people.

Learning From Others

“…Given a model of how knowledgeable and naïve (i.e., not knowledgeable) individuals choose actions, it is straightforward to formalize how Learning from human action 19 learners could infer who is knowledgeable (and similarly, who is well-intentioned). Indeed, Shafto et al (2012) propose a model of this problem, and bring it to bear on research on the development of epistemic trust Corriveau, Fusaro, & Harris, 2009;Koenig & Harris, 2005;Pasquini, Corriveau, Koenig, & Harris, 2007). In this literature, children's success in choosing reliable informants is attributed to their ability to monitor which informants are knowledgeable.…”

“…For instance, a person may be interested in deceiving or lying, instead of teaching or (cooperatively) communicating. These kinds of goals can be straightforwardly formalized within this framework (Shafto, Eaves, Navarro, & Perfors, 2012;Warner, Stoess, & Shafto, 2011). However, we do not yet have definitive lists of the kinds of goals that are relevant.…”

Is it the thought that counts? : investigating children's understanding of helpfulness, effort, and utility.

“…Learning about the world happens often in the context of personal interactions; yet these interactions may not always be with helpful or competent individuals who are both able and willing to satisfactorily instruct the learner (Shafto et al, 2012). Because of this, it becomes necessary for learners, particularly young children, to become capable of taking a critical stance toward informants in potentially epistemic situations (Mills, 2013).…”

“…Several studies have linked this social dimension with various informant features, such as intention Vanderbilt et al, 2011), niceness or kindness (Landrum et al, 2013;Lane et al, 2013), and helpfulness (e.g., Shafto et al, 2012). Although research has shown that, for example, children prioritize informant niceness over expertise (Landrum et al, 2013) and intention over accuracy (Liu et al, 2013), it is unclear how children are conceptualizing the HELPFULNESS, EFFORT, AND UTILITY 6 social dimension.…”

“…Primary to whether a child trusts information from an informant is the child's evaluation of that informant's positive (or negative) capacities in intellectual and social dimensions (Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007; see also Landrum, Mills, & Johnston, 2013;Mascaro & Sperber, 2009;Shafto, Eaves, Navarro, & Perfors, 2012). Typically, an informant's capacity on the intellectual dimension has been understood as competence (e.g., Fiske et al, 2007;Mascaro & Sperber, 2009;Landrum et al, 2013) and measured in terms of characteristics that indicate an informant's ability to provide accurate information, such as prior history of accuracy (e.g., Brosseau-Liard & Birch, 2010;Koenig & Harris, 2005), expertise (e.g., Aguiar, Stoess, & Taylor, 2012;Landrum et al, 2013;Lutz & Keil, 2002), and relevance to the domain at hand (e.g., Danovitch & Keil, 2007).…”