The arrival of the Three Wise Men or Santa Claus loaded with gifts are some of the stories that we tell children to encourage their illusion, although it is increasingly difficult to hide the truth as they grow and access the information available on the Internet. And it is that children are very observant, and when we think that they are absorbed in a television program or in their games, it is possible that they also have their antennas deployed to listen and analyze what is happening in their environment.
Since they are babies they learn by themselves by observing what happens around them and by experimenting, and although they also learn through what adults explain to them, especially their parents and relatives and their teachers, they do not believe everything they are told, instead, they try to verify it by finding out more information and asking questions about it, especially if it’s something surprising, something that is more likely in children over the age of six than in those of four and five years, according to some recent research .
Now, researchers from the University of Toronto and Harvard University have conducted a new study to find out why children react searching for information when adults tell them something surprising, by reviewing two previous studies. Their findings have been published in Child Development.
“Research shows that as children get older, they become more skeptical of what adults tell them,” said Samantha Cottrell, senior fellow at the University of Toronto’s Child Learning and Development (ChiLD) Laboratory. “This explains why older children are more likely to try to verify claims with greater determination in exploring their goals.”
Children are skeptical of surprising claims
The first study was carried out between September 2019 and March 2020 and included the participation of 109 children aged four to six years from the Greater Toronto Area (Canada). Parents of 108 of the 109 children reported their child’s ethnicity (49% White, 21% Mixed or Mixed Race, and 19% Southeast Asian), with almost all parents reporting their educational level ; 18% of children had parents who did not attend college, 34% had one parent who went to college, and 48% had two parents who went to college.
“Children do not believe everything they are told. They think about what they have been told and, if they are skeptical, they look for additional information that can confirm or disprove it”
Children were presented with three familiar objects: a rock, a piece of sponge-like material, and a bag of hacky (balls filled with plastic beads or other material used to play hacky attack). One of the researchers then asked them: “Do you think this rock is hard or soft?” All the children stated that the rock was hard. Then, they were divided into random groups to be told something that contradicted their beliefs about the world (“Actually, this stone is soft, not hard”), or something that confirmed their opinion (“That’s right, this stone is hard”). hard”).
After this they were asked again: “So, do you think this rock is hard or soft?” Almost all of the children who heard statements that fit their beliefs went on to say that the rock was hard. However, few of the children who were told that the rock was soft maintained the same judgment as before. The investigator then told them that he had to leave the room to take a phone call and let them explore the object on his own.
They recorded them on video and it was found that most of the children, regardless of their age, were dedicated to proving surprising claims. The researchers hypothesized that previously reported age differences in children’s exploration of surprising claims might be evidence of their developing abilities to use exploration to test more complex claims.
Another possibility was that as they age the motivation behind children’s desire to explore changes, and that while younger children want to investigate because they have believed what they have been told and want to see that surprising fact, older children decide explore because they are skeptical about what they have been told.
In the second study, which was carried out between September and December 2020, 154 children aged 4 to 7 years residing in the same area as those in the first study participated. The parents of 132 of the 154 children reported their ethnicity as 50% white, 20% mixed ethnicity or race, and 17% Southeast Asian. Almost all of them also defined their educational level: 20% of the children had parents who did not go to college, 35% had one parent who attended college, and 45% had two parents who attended college.
The investigation in this case was done through Zoom due to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. One researcher shared his screen and presented each of the participants with eight vignettes. For each vignette, children were told that the adult made a surprising statement (for example, “The rock is soft” or “The sponge is harder than the rock”) and asked what another child should do in response. to that claim and why they should do that.
Results showed that older children (ages six and seven) were more likely than younger children to indicate an exploration strategy that suited the statement they had heard (i.e. touch the rock in the first example, but touch the rock and sponge in the second example). It was also noted that as children age, they increasingly justify exploration as a means of verifying an adult’s surprising claim. These findings suggest that as children get older, even when they are equally likely to engage in exploration of surprising claims, they become more aware of their doubts about what adults tell them, and their exploration becomes more premeditated as a result. , specific and effective.
“There is still a lot we don’t know,” said Samuel Ronfard, assistant professor at the University of Toronto and laboratory director at the Child Learning and Development (ChiLD) Laboratory, “but what is clear is that children don’t believe everything. what they tell them. They think about what they’ve been told and if they’re skeptical, they look for additional information that might confirm or disprove it.”
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