Turkish- and English-speaking 3-year-old children are sensitive to the evidential strength of claims when revising their beliefs

• Published in: Journal of experimental child psychology Vol. 249; p. 106068
• Main Authors: Özkan, F. Ece, Ronfard, Samuel, Aydın, Çağla, Köymen, Bahar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.01.2025
• Subjects: Belief revision; Collaborative problem-solving; Cross-linguistic differences; Evidentiality; Inference; Reasoning; Inference; Evidentiality; Cross-linguistic differences; Reasoning; Belief revision; Collaborative problem-solving
• ISSN: 0022-0965; 1096-0457; 1096-0457
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106068

•3-year-olds can evaluate the evidential strength of a claim when revising their beliefs.•Turkish- and English-speaking children evaluate the evidential strength of a claim the same way.•Being exposed to languages with evidential marking may not provide an advantage in evaluating information reliability. Individuals revise their beliefs based on the evidential strength of others’ claims. Unlike English, in languages such as Turkish evidential marking is obligatory; speakers must express whether their claims are based on direct observation or not. We investigated whether Turkish- and English-speaking 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 146; 72 girls; based in Turkey and Canada) differed in their belief revision after hearing claims based on direct observation, indirect observation, or inference. We found the same pattern in both linguistic groups; the 3-year-olds revised their beliefs more often when they heard claims based on direct observation and inference than on indirect observation, whereas the 5-year-olds showed no difference across different claims. By age 3, Turkish- and English-speaking children are sensitive to the strength of claims when revising their beliefs.