An official website of the United States government
Abstract Although children exhibit curiosity regarding science, questions remain regarding how children evaluate others' curiosity and whether evaluations differ across domains that prioritize faith (e.g., religion) versus those that value questioning (e.g., science). In Study 1 (n = 115 5‐ to 8‐year‐olds; 49% female; 66% White), children evaluated actors who were curious, ignorant and non‐curious, or knowledgeable about religion or science; curiosity elicited relatively favorable moral evaluations (ds > .40). Study 2 (n = 62 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds; 48% female; 63% White) found that these evaluations generalized to behaviors, as children acted more pro‐socially and less punitively toward curious, versus not curious, individuals ( = .37). These findings (data collected 2020–2022) demonstrate children's positive moral evaluations of curiosity and contribute to debates regarding overlap between scientific and religious cognition.
more »
« less
Children Change Their Answers in Response to Neutral Follow‐Up Questions by a Knowledgeable Asker
Abstract Burgeoning evidence suggests that when children observe data, they use knowledge of the demonstrator's intent to augment learning. We propose that the effects of social learning may go beyond cases where children observe data, to cases where they receive no new information at all. We present a model of how simply asking a question a second time may lead to belief revision, when the questioner is expected to know the correct answer. We provide an analysis of the CHILDES corpus to show that these neutral follow‐up questions are used in parent–child conversations. We then present three experiments investigating 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children's reactions to neutral follow‐up questions posed by ignorant or knowledgeable questioners. Children were more likely to change their answers in response to a neutral follow‐up question from a knowledgeable questioner than an ignorant one. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of common practices in legal, educational, and experimental psychological settings.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1660885
- PAR ID:
- 10129703
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Cognitive Science
- Volume:
- 44
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0364-0213
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract How can education optimize transmission of knowledge while also fostering further learning? Focusing on children at the cusp of formal schooling (N= 180, age = 4.0–6.0 y), we investigate learning after direct instruction by a knowledgeable teacher, after questioning by a knowledgeable teacher, and after questioning by a naïve informant. Consistent with previous findings, instruction by a knowledgeable teacher allows effective information transmission but at the cost of exploration and further learning. Critically, we find a dual benefit for questioning by a knowledgeable teacher: Suchpedagogical questioningboth effectively transmits knowledge and fosters exploration and further learning, regardless of whether the question was directed to the child or directed to a third party and overheard by the child. These effects are not observed when the same question is asked by a naïve informant. We conclude that a teacher's choice of pedagogical method may differentially influence learning through their choices of how, and how not, to present evidence, with implications for transmission of knowledge and self‐directed discovery. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJXH2b65wL8more » « less
-
ABSTRACT In child sexual abuse (CSA) testimony, attorneys may ask children questions containing pronoun anaphora (e.g., “Where was your Dad?” “What did he do?”heis a pronoun anaphora for referent,Dad). To answer these questions, children must recall the pronoun's referent and appropriate answer to the question. This may be too complex a cognitive task for young children, especially when there are multiple question‐and‐answer (Q–A) turns between the referent and pronoun, leading to misunderstanding. We examined Q–A pairs containing pronouns in 40 CSA testimonies of 5 to 10‐year‐olds. Many attorneys' questions (24%) contained pronouns. Attorneys averaged 4.11 Q–A turns between the referent and pronoun. With each additional Q–A turn, the likelihood of misunderstanding increased. Children's age was also associated with a significant decrease in misunderstanding, meaning older children exhibited fewer misunderstandings. To reduce misunderstanding, those questioning children should clarify the referent quickly when their question contains pronoun anaphora.more » « less
-
The paper presents results from a pilot questionnaire-based study on ten Stack Overflow (SO) questions. Eleven developers were tasked with determining if the SO question sentiment was positive, negative or neutral. The results from the questionnaire indicate that developers mostly rated the sentiment of SO questions as neutral, stating that they received little or no emotional feedback from the questions. Tools that were designed to analyze Software Engineering related texts (SentiStrength-SE, SentiCR, and Senti4SD) were on average more closely aligned with developer ratings for a majority of the questions than general purpose tools for detecting SO question sentiment. We discuss cases where tools and developer sentiment differ along with implications of the results. Overall, the sentiment tool output on the question title and body is more aligned with the developer rating than just the title alone. Since SO is a very common medium of technical exchange, we also report that adding code snippets, short titles, and multiple tags were top three features developers prefer in SO questions in order for it to be answered quickly.more » « less
-
As large language models (LLMs) continue to evolve, their capacity to replace humans as their surrogates is also improving. As increasing numbers of intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) are embracing the integration of LLMs for digital tutoring, questions are arising as to how effective they are and if their hallucinatory behaviors diminish their perceived advantages. One critical question that is seldom asked if the availability, plurality, and relative weaknesses in the reasoning process of LLMs are contributing to the much discussed digital divide and equity and fairness in online learning. In this paper, we present an experiment with database design theory assignments and demonstrate that while their capacity to reason logically is improving, LLMs are still prone to serious errors. We demonstrate that in online learning and in the absence of a human instructor, LLMs could introduce inequity in the form of “wrongful” tutoring that could be devastatingly harmful for learners, which we call ignorant bias, in increasingly popular digital learning. We also show that significant challenges remain for STEM subjects, especially for subjects for which sound and free online tutoring systems exist. Based on the set of use cases, we formulate a possible direction for an effective ITS for online database learning classes of the future.more » « less
