@article{ref1,
title="When being right is not enough: four-year-olds distinguish knowledgeable informants from merely accurate informants",
journal="Psychological science",
year="2011",
author="Einav, Shiri and Robinson, Elizabeth J.",
volume="22",
number="10",
pages="1250-1253",
abstract="Recent evidence demonstrates that children are selective in their social learning, preferring to learn from a previously accurate speaker than from a previously inaccurate one. We examined whether children assessing speakers' reliability take into account how speakers achieved their prior accuracy. In Study 1, when faced with two accurate informants, 4- and 5-year-olds (but not 3-year-olds) were more likely to seek novel information from an informant who had previously given the answers unaided than from an informant who had always relied on help from a third party. Similarly, in Study 2, 4-year-olds were more likely to trust the testimony of an unaided informant over the testimony provided by an assisted informant. Our results indicate that when children reach around 4 years of age, their selective trust extends beyond simple generalizations based on informants' past accuracy to a more sophisticated selectivity that distinguishes between truly knowledgeable informants and merely accurate informants who may not be reliable in the long term.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0956-7976",
doi="10.1177/0956797611416998",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611416998"
}