L8 - Selective Social Learning Flashcards
What is the focus on autonomous learning?
Children learn primarily from their own exploration and active interpretation of the data that they gather
Learning from verbal input likely to be superficial
Teaches themselves
What is social constructivism?
Vygotsky:
Children are curious explorers
Important discoveries occur in context of collaborative dialogues between child and more knowledgeable members of society
Scaffolding - adults offer support by modelling activities and verbal instruction
How do we learn from others?
Testimony - information communicated by others via assertions
We rely on the testimony for:
- general knowledge
- specific information
- cultural norms and rules
- personal information
What are the types of learning from others?
Formal - explicit teaching
Informal - everyday dialogue with adults, siblings and peers, asking questions, imitation, overhearing
Indirectly - through books, TV and the internet
But some sources are more reliable than others
What is epistemic vigilance?
To evaluate the credibility of information source and the plausibility of claims
Needed to achieve effective social learning
What is the historical perspective of children trusting everything others tell them?
To believe what they tell us it is unlimited in children
Children learn reliable and unreliable informants much later
What is the recent perspective of children trusting everything others tell them?
Children are credulous especially gullible
Yet to master the intricacies of doubt
What is early specticism?
Rejecting blatantly false claims
From 16 months infants reject false labels
3-4 year olds reject claims that are inconsistent with their own perceptual judgement
They didn’t defer from their own knowledge
What is the risky slopes research into testing testimony?
12m old children looked for the reaction of their caregiver to figure out how to act in an ambiguous situation
18m old ignored mum’s advice and relied on perceptual information
Only relied on mum when they could not assess
What are the biases to believing?
2-3 year olds accept conflicting labels
4 year olds more likely to accept conflicting labels if there is additional information
6-8 year olds will accept conflicting labels when stimulus is ambiguous
What role does prior knowledge have in assessing unexpected testimony?
Children compare others’ testimony to existing knowledge
When own knowledge base is strong they are more likely to stick with own beliefs
What are the cognitive skills supporting development of scepticism?
Responding sceptically required inhibiting the normally appropriate expectations that what people say is true
Responding sceptically required awareness that others may deceive
- mixed evidence for role of theory of mind
What are the underlying abilities for spotting the signs of selective trust?
Sensitivity to appropriate cues about individuals competence or honesty
Appreciate that prior competence/honesty is linked to future reliability
Keep track of person specific information about reliability to guide selective learning from reliable informants
What was the 2004 research into signs of selective trust?
3-4 year olds use informants past accuracy to assess the reliability of their testimony
They would rather seek help and accept new information
Are children sensitive to graded differences in speakers accuracy?
At 4 children are sensitive to relative frequency of errors speakers make
At 3 children only differentiate between speakers when one was always right
Growing ability to differentiate on basis of relative error size between 4-7
