Pointing disrupts preschoolers’ ability to discriminate between knowledgeable and ignorant informants

By 4 years of age, children have been reinforced repeatedly for searching where they see someone point. In two studies, we asked whether this history of reinforcement could interfere with young children's ability to discriminate between a knowledgeable and an ignorant informant. Children watche...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCognitive development Vol. 27; no. 1; pp. 54 - 63
Main Authors Palmquist, Carolyn M., Burns, Heather E., Jaswal, Vikram K.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Elsevier Inc 2012
Elsevier
Subjects
Context Effect
Credibility
Cues
Knowing
Knowledge Level
Nonverbal Communication
Pointing
Preschool Children
Reinforcement
Seeing
Social learning
Value Judgment
Pointing
Social learning
Knowing
Reference
Seeing
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Summary:By 4 years of age, children have been reinforced repeatedly for searching where they see someone point. In two studies, we asked whether this history of reinforcement could interfere with young children's ability to discriminate between a knowledgeable and an ignorant informant. Children watched as one informant hid a sticker while another turned around, and then both informants indicated where they though the sticker was, either by pointing or by using a less practiced means of reference. Children failed to discriminate between the two informants when they pointed, but they chose the location indicated by the knowledgeable informant when the informants used a cue other than pointing. Pointing can disrupt as basic an understanding as the link between seeing and knowing.
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ISSN:0885-2014
1879-226X
DOI:10.1016/j.cogdev.2011.07.002