Dissociation between what convinces children, and the reasons they use to convince others, by Dr Thomas Castelain

Dissociation between what convinces children, and the reasons they use to convince others

From early on, children are sensitive to the strength of the arguments they are exposed to. By the age of 5 at least, they are also able to produce reasons adapted to the context. However, little is known about young children’s ability to use evidence they have acquired, or the arguments that have convinced them, to convince others in turn. As a first investigation into this issue, we showed children hybrid pictures and attempted to convince them that it depicted the less likely entity through various means (e.g. Expertise, Consensus, Argument of expertise, Argument of consensus and Perceptual argument). The children were then introduced to a puppet with whom they were invited to share this new belief. Depending on the condition, children had to: (i) report what they were exposed to, (ii) justify how they had acquired the new belief, or (iii) convince the puppet to accept this new belief. The results suggested that children were able to accurately recall the source and the information they had been exposed to. By contrast, when they were asked to justify their answers, or to convince someone else, they mostly relied on perceptual arguments, irrespective of how they themselves had been convinced. It thus seems that children have a tendency to produce first-hand evidence as reasons, irrespective of how they acquired a belief. Interestingly, the same pattern has been observed in adults, even in speakers of indigenous languages with evidential systems. Tentative explanations for this phenomenon are offered.