Little Nieces and Nephews May Not Be that Gullible After All
Written By Savvy Auntie Staff Writers
By: Maya Listman
A recently published paper in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology showed that young children are often selective about whom they’ll learn from, trusting some people over others.
This research, which was done at Concordia University in collaboration with researchers from University of Ottawa, took 65 children through a series of tasks which tested their ability to learn new words, as well as their "theory of mind" (ToM), “the intuitive understanding of one's own and other people's minds or mental states.” The researchers tested whether a child was more likely to trust new information from an accurate person as opposed to an inaccurate person, as well as whether a child was more likely to trust new information from a physically strong person as opposed to a physically weak individual. "Kids have also been shown to prefer learning from nicer, more confident or more attractive individuals -- attributes that don't have anything to do with intelligence. We speculated that certain social-cognitive abilities might explain some of these learning differences," the study's senior author Diane Poulin-Dubois notes.
While the researches note that theory of mind accounts for only a small difference, the kids with better ToM skills were less gullible. The researchers also attributed other social and cognitive skills to a child’s ability to selectively learn.
This might mean that your more intuitive young nieces and nephews have important social and cognitive skills. If you are someone whose information your nieces and nephews trust, this could mean that they actually think very highly of you.
Photo: Anastasia_vish
Published: September 29, 2015