ERIC Number: EJ1259844
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1524-8372
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Individual Differences in Children's Preferential Learning from Accurate Speakers: Stable but Fragile
Cossette, Isabelle; Fobert, Sophie F.; Slinger, Michael; Brosseau-Liard, Patricia E.
Journal of Cognition and Development, v21 n3 p348-367 2020
Children have repeatedly been shown to selectively prefer to learn from previously accurate informants rather than those who have been inaccurate in the past. However, the stability of individual differences in performance on such tasks has yet to be studied. We presented preschoolers with two identical selective learning tasks conducted one week apart (Study 1; N = 53) or two parallel selective learning tasks conducted one immediately after the other (Study 2; N = 54). Results on both studies indicate that preschoolers tend to rely on the previously accurate informant more often than chance, replicating prior findings, but also showed weak correlations between performance across trials and administrations. In Study 1, performance on the first administration weakly, but significantly predicted performance on the second, identical, administration; in Study 2, performance on the first task only predicted performance on the second (non-identical) task when informant order was kept constant. Furthermore, in both studies, changes to the order of presentation of informants between trials within a task disrupted performance. Neither age, sex, theory of mind nor vocabulary predicted individual performance. These results confirm that there is some stability in individual tendencies to selectively learn from an accurate informant, but this stability can be fragile and easily disrupted by superficial task characteristics, raising several questions regarding the suitability of existing selective learning measures for the testing of individual differences.
Descriptors: Individual Differences, Accuracy, Preferences, Preschool Children, Foreign Countries, Performance, Reliability, Individual Characteristics, Age Differences, Theory of Mind, Vocabulary
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A