Parameterizing developmental changes in epistemic trust.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Development
• Social Cognition
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Children's ability to assess information sources is crucial for learning.
• Debate exists on whether children infer only knowledgeability or both knowledgeability and intent of informants.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel computational framework for analyzing children's trust in informants.
• To integrate findings across diverse ages and methodologies.
• To model developmental trajectories in reasoning about informant knowledgeability and intent.

Main Methods:

• Application of a computational model to a dataset spanning 8 months to adulthood.
• Integration of results from various research methods.
• Analysis of developmental changes in inferences about informant knowledgeability and intent.

Main Results:

• The framework successfully fits existing literature on trust in informants.
• A clear developmental trajectory was observed in children's reasoning about informant intent.
• No significant changes were found in reasoning about informant knowledgeability across development.

Conclusions:

• Children's trust development involves increasing sophistication in evaluating informant intent.
• The proposed framework offers a unified approach to studying trust across a broad developmental spectrum.
• Methodological differences can influence findings in the study of informant trust.