Young Children’s Changing Reactions to Counterintuitive Claims

Abstract

This dissertation examines young children’s acceptance of, memory for, and doubts about counterintuitive claims. In Study 1, children aged 3- to 5-years in the United States and China were asked to categorize hybrids whose perceptual features originated from two different animals or two different objects (75% from one and 25% from the other). At first, most children categorized the hybrids in terms of their predominant perceptual features. However, after hearing counter-perceptual categorizations by an adult, children categorized fewer hybrids in terms of their predominant features. When retested 1-to 2-weeks later, the adult’s earlier counter-intuitive categorizations still impacted children’s categorizations but less strongly. In Study 2, American children aged 3- to 6-years were presented with three different-sized Russian dolls and asked to say which doll was the heaviest. Most children pointed to the biggest doll. They were then told that the smallest doll was the heaviest and that the biggest was the lightest, a claim that was false. Most children subsequently endorsed this claim. Nevertheless, when the experimenter left the room, older children were likely to check it by lifting the biggest and smallest dolls. Younger children rarely conducted such checks. In Study 3, Chinese preschool and elementary school children were presented with five different-sized Russian dolls and asked to indicate the heaviest doll. Half of the children then heard a false, counter-intuitive claim (i.e., smallest = heaviest). The remaining children heard a claim confirming their intuitions (i.e., biggest = heaviest). Again, most children endorsed the experimenter’s claim even when it was counter-intuitive. During the experimenter’s subsequent absence, elementary school children explored the dolls more if they had received counter-intuitive rather than confirming testimony. Preschool children rarely explored no matter what testimony they had received. On the experimenter’s return, children who had explored the dolls were likely to reject her counter-intuitive claim.

Thus, counterintuitive claims can overturn children’s beliefs but their influence fades over time and is moderated by children’s opportunities to search for empirical evidence. Across two cultures, older children were more inclined than younger children to use opportunities to seek empirical evidence to check counterintuitive claims.