Interpersonal trust in children's testimonial learning

Abstract

Within the growing developmental literature on children's testimonial learning, the emphasis placed on children's evaluations of testimonial evidence has shielded from view some of the more collaborative dimensions of testimonial learning. Drawing on recent philosophical work on testimony and interpersonal trust, we argue for an alternative way of conceptualizing the social nature of testimonial learning. On this alternative, some testimonial learning is the result of a jointly collaborative epistemic activity, an activity that aims at the epistemic goal of true belief, but that does so by means of an irreducibly social process.

Trusting information from friends: Adults expect it but preschoolers do not.

“…Seminal research on children's social learning has shown that children factor in a history of epistemic accuracy when choosing who to learn from, trusting those who are more likely to have correct beliefs to share (e.g., Koenig & Harris, 2005;Koenig et al, 2004Koenig et al, , 2019Sobel & Finiasz, 2020). More recently, researchers have started to emphasize the importance of social and interpersonal processes that might affect children's trust (e.g., Koenig et al, 2021;Tong et al, 2020). Specifically, there is some evidence that starting from around 4 years of age, children prefer to learn from individuals based on their interpersonal and social characteristics, such as one's manner of address, being a native language speaker, or a prosocial agent (Kinzler et al, 2011;Lane et al, 2013;Li & Koenig, 2020).…”

The Development of Intent-based Epistemic Trust

“…Deciding whether and when to trust others is therefore a crucial task, and the development of this ability has been the subject of extensive investigation by child psychologists (for a review, Koenig et al, 2021). Exhaustively reviewing this literature would be beyond the scope of this brief research report.…”

The Collaborative Nature of Testimonial Learning

“…Much research examines children's ability to estimate another person's knowledge, prior reliability, or expertise when evaluating their testimony (for reviews, see Brosseau‐Liard, 2017; Harris, Koenig, Corriveau & Jaswal, 2018; Sobel & Finiasz, 2020). Here, we focus on children's ability to participate in a range of social interactions that involve estimating a person's interpersonal commitments, abilities to hold both speakers and listeners accountable, and deciding how much to trust speakers who make such commitments (Pesch & Koenig, 2018; Koenig, Li & McMyler, 2022).…”

“…In contrast, children also make a second type of decision, collaborative decisions that aim to settle questions like, “Are you asking me to take you at your word?,” “Can I hold you responsible for your words and actions?,” “If I mistrust your testimony, how will you feel in return?” When children make the first type of decisions, they are concerned with whether a speaker possesses sufficient knowledge or competence to make a given claim and whether these claims are sufficiently supported (e.g., do they have appropriate access to evidence; see Koenig, Tiberius & Hamlin, 2019). However, when they make the second type of decision, children are concerned with whether to take a person at their word in the context of an epistemic collaboration in which a speaker simply asks for a listener's trust, trust that can be given or withheld by the listener (for a larger discussion of the distinction between evidential learning and interpersonal trust, see Koenig, Li & McMyler, 2022; Koenig & McMyler, 2019). In cases of epistemic collaboration, testimonial learning is similar to joint action, as both involve working toward a shared goal through a social process that necessitates a mutual understanding of individual responsibilities within the collaborative activity.…”