Children's understanding of the evidential connotation of 'know' in relation to overestimation of their own knowledge

This study examined five- to seven-year-olds' assumptions about the experiential connotation of 'I know that's X'. In Experiment I children tried to identify which of a set of unfamiliar targets had a given name (X), and after they had chosen, we enquired either whether they knew their chosen item was (X) or whether they were sure. Six- to seven-year-olds (N = 39) judged that they were sure more often than they judged that they knew, which suggests that although they experienced confidence that they had chosen correctly, they assumed it would be inappropriate to judge 'know', because this would imply an experiential basis, which was absent. Five- to six-year-olds (N = 36) did not discriminate between the two kinds of question. In Experiment 2, children could infer which item was a named unfamiliar cartoon character by ruling out familiar distractors. Six- to seven-year-olds (N = 35) judged that they knew they had picked the right one much more often than they judged that they knew their chosen picture was (target name). Again, five- to six-year-olds (N = 44) did not discriminate between the two kinds of question. This demonstrates powerfully that the older children held an experiential connotation of 'I know that's X', since they avoided such judgments even when they knew by inference they had chosen correctly.