How do Children (and Adults) Interpret Confidence Cues?

Abstract

We often think that children absorb everything that they are told, but they are in fact quite selective when learning from others. For instance, previous research has demonstrated that children prefer to imitate and learn from a confident individual over a hesitant one. Importantly, very few studies to date have examined why children use confidence cues. In this dissertation, I thus focus on how confidence cues are interpreted. In Experiment 1, whether preschoolers interpret confidence cues as situational or person-specific was examined. Experiments 2a and 2b explored children's and adults' interpretation of confidence cues as epistemic or social and examined the preference for confidence as opposed to the hesitancy avoidance. Results from Experiment 1 indicate that 4- and 5-year-olds primarily treat confidence cues as situational when learning novel words. Experiment 2a suggests that adults associate confidence to both knowledge-related and social traits, whereas findings from Experiment 2b reveal that children ages 7 to 10 mainly perceive confidence as an indicator of knowledge (i.e., making knowledge- related attributions). Experiments 2a and 2b also indicate a hesitancy avoidance in adults and school-age children where hesitancy appears more salient and impactful than confidence. These findings have important implications for developmental research and, more specifically, for children's selective learning. It enlightens us on the situational interpretation of confidence cues, at least for younger children, hints towards a developmental progression in the attribution of traits inferred from confidence and reveals that hesitancy and confidence seems to be treated differently.