Preschoolers Expect Pointers (Even Ignorant Ones) to Be Knowledgeable

Preschoolers expect pointers (even ignorant ones) to be knowledgeable.

Learning words from knowledgeable versus ignorant speakers: links between preschoolers' theory of mind and semantic development.

Two studies addressed whether children consider speakers' knowledge states when establishing initial word-referent links. In Study 1, forty-eight 3- and 4-year-olds were taught two novel words by a speaker who expressed either knowledge or ignorance about the words' referents. Children showed better word learning when the speaker was knowledgeable. In Study 2, forty-eight 3- and 4-year-olds wer...

Preschoolers mistrust ignorant and inaccurate speakers.

Being able to evaluate the accuracy of an informant is essential to communication. Three experiments explored preschoolers' (N=119) understanding that, in cases of conflict, information from reliable informants is preferable to information from unreliable informants. In Experiment 1, children were presented with previously accurate and inaccurate informants who presented conflicting names for n...

Ignorant hooded crows follow knowledgeable roost-mates to food: support for the information centre hypothesis.

Communal roosting in birds may function to enhance foraging efficiency as explained by the information centre hypothesis, which predicts that successful foragers return from the roost to the rewarding food patch and that birds ignorant of this food follow knowledgeable roost-mates. We tested these predictions by exposing 34 radio-tagged, free-ranging, flock-living hooded crows (Corvus corone co...

Preschoolers expect others to learn rationally from evidence

Even infants expect agents to act rationally in pursuit of their goals. However, little research has looked at whether young children expect other agents to learn rationally. In the current study, we investigated 4.5to 6-year-olds’ reasoning about another agent’s beliefs after the agent observed a sample drawn randomly or selectively from a population. We found that those children who could cor...