Sensitivity to Confidence Cues Increases during the Second Year of Life

Brosseau-Liard, Patricia É.; Poulin‐Dubois, Diane

doi:10.1111/infa.12056

Cited by 54 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Eighteenmonth-olds might be early enough in the process of learning to exchange information that they have no default assumptions about others. Of course, between 18 and 24 months, toddlers also develop higher sensitivity to confidence cues, which they rely on in deciding whom to trust (Brosseau-Liard & Poulin-Dubois, 2014). It is possible that children see speakers who ask questions as being less confident than speakers who make statements, making them both unreliable.…”

Section: This Finding Corroborates and Extends Work By Brooker Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eighteen-month-olds selectively generalize words from accurate speakers to novel contexts

Luchkina¹,

Sobel²,

Morgan³

2018

Preprint

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• Toddlers generalize words learned from speakers who accurately label familiar objects, but not speakers who are inaccurate.• When speakers ask questions that contain accurate or inaccurate labels for objects during familiarization, toddlers do not consider either speaker a reliable source of knowledge for novel labels.• These data suggest that toddlers are using more than word-object-speaker associations to determine speaker reliability. | INTRODUC TI ONBecause the relation between how a word sounds and what a word means is arbitrary and conventional (Saussure, 1916(Saussure, /1966, children must learn the meanings of words from other competent language users. Several studies have found that preschoolers use speakers' history of accuracy in labeling familiar words when they learn meanings of novel words. For example, Koenig and colleagues (e.g., Koenig & Harris, 2005) have shown that 4-year-olds identified an informant who was accurate in labeling familiar objects as knowledgeable about the meaning of words, and predicted that she would be more likely to know the name of a novel object over an informant who was always inaccurate at labeling familiar objects.Even before children reach preschool age, they exhibit an ability to track interlocutors' competence or accuracy and use it in learning situations. For example, Zmyj, Buttelmann, Carpenter, and Daum (2010) showed that 14-month-olds are less likely to imitate agents' novel actions when those agents use familiar objects incompetently (for example, putting a shoe on their hand instead of foot) than when agents use familiar objects competently. Similarly, 12-month-olds track informants' competence and use it in their own exploratory behavior (Stenberg, 2013). Even 8-month-old infants have the capacity to monitor the reliability of a potential informant's gaze and AbstractThe present studies examine whether and how 18-month-olds use informants' accuracy to acquire novel labels for novel objects and generalize them to a new context. In Experiment 1, two speakers made statements about the labels of familiar objects. One used accurate labels and the other used inaccurate labels. One of these speakers then introduced novel labels for two novel objects. At test, toddlers saw those two novel objects and heard an unfamiliar voice say one of the labels provided by the speaker. Only toddlers who had heard the novel labels introduced by the accurate speaker looked at the appropriate novel object above chance. Experiment 2 explored possible mechanisms underlying this difference in generalization. Rather than making statements about familiar objects' labels, both speakers asked questions about the objects' labels, with one speaker using accurate labels and the other using inaccurate labels. Toddlers' generalization of novel labels for novel objects was at chance for both speakers, suggesting that toddlers do not simply associate hearing the accurate label with the reliability of the speaker. We discuss these results in terms of potential mechanisms by which children learn ...

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Section: This Finding Corroborates and Extends Work By Brooker Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eighteen-month-olds selectively generalize words from accurate speakers to novel contexts

Luchkina¹,

Sobel²,

Morgan³

2018

Preprint

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“…Confidence is certainly one clue to the quality of a source’s knowledge, and one that children use. A sensitivity to confidence in demonstrations of object use emerges early in development, increasing dramatically during the second year of life (Brosseau-Liard & Poulin-Dubois, 2014). Even before rich language processing is available, non-verbal confidence is monitored as a way of judging the informativeness of others’ actions.…”

Section: Developmental Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The better part of not knowing: Virtuous ignorance.

Kominsky

Langthorne

Keil

2016

Developmental Psychology

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Suppose you are presented with two informants who have provided answers to the same question. One provides a precise and confident answer, and the other says that they do not know. If you were asked which of these two informants was more of an expert, intuitively you would select the informant who provided the certain answer over the ignorant informant. However, for cases in which precise information is practically or actually unknowable (e.g., the number of leaves on all the trees in the world), certainty and confidence indicate a lack of competence, while expressions of ignorance may indicate greater expertise. In three experiments, we investigated whether children and adults are able to use this “virtuous ignorance” as a cue to expertise. Experiment 1 found that adults and children older than 9 years selected confident informants for knowable information and ignorant informants for unknowable information. However, 5–6-year-olds overwhelmingly favored the confident informant, even when such certainty was completely implausible. In Experiment 2 we replicated the results of Experiment 1 with a new set of items focused on predictions about the future, rather than numerical information. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that 5–8-year-olds and adults are both able to distinguish between knowable and unknowable items when asked how difficult the information would be to acquire, but those same children failed to reject the precise and confident informant for unknowable items. We suggest that children have difficulty integrating information about the knowability of particular facts into their evaluations of expertise.

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“…Results revealed that infants were able to detect the unreliable emoter, as shown by their increased latency to inspect the content of the box over trials. In addition to emotional cues, infants have also been shown to rely on the conventionality (Zmyj, Buttelmann, Carpenter, & Daum, 2010) as well as the confidence (Birch, Akmal, & Frampton, 2010;Brosseau-Liard & Poulin-Dubois, 2014) conveyed by the informant. Similarly, research has shown that infants are less likely to imitate the novel actions of an informant who displays unreliable emotional cues (Poulin-Dubois, Brooker, & Polonia, 2011).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective social learning in infancy: looking for mechanisms

Crivello

Phillips

Poulin‐Dubois

2017

Developmental Science

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Although there is mounting evidence that selective social learning begins in infancy, the psychological mechanisms underlying this ability are currently a controversial issue. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether theory of mind abilities and statistical learning skills are related to infants' selective social learning. Seventy-seven 18-month-olds were first exposed to a reliable or an unreliable speaker and then completed a word learning task, two theory of mind tasks, and a statistical learning task. If domain-general abilities are linked to selective social learning, then infants who demonstrate superior performance on the statistical learning task should perform better on the selective learning task, that is, should be less likely to learn words from an unreliable speaker. Alternatively, if domain-specific abilities are involved, then superior performance on theory of mind tasks should be related to selective learning performance. Findings revealed that, as expected, infants were more likely to learn a novel word from a reliable speaker. Importantly, infants who passed a theory of mind task assessing knowledge attribution were significantly less likely to learn a novel word from an unreliable speaker compared to infants who failed this task. No such effect was observed for the other tasks. These results suggest that infants who possess superior social-cognitive abilities are more apt to reject an unreliable speaker as informant. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/zuuCniHYzqo.

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Sensitivity to Confidence Cues Increases during the Second Year of Life

Cited by 54 publications

References 43 publications

Eighteen-month-olds selectively generalize words from accurate speakers to novel contexts

Eighteen-month-olds selectively generalize words from accurate speakers to novel contexts

The better part of not knowing: Virtuous ignorance.

Selective social learning in infancy: looking for mechanisms

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