Knowledge and source type influence children’s skepticism of misinformation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Three-year-olds often respond to lies as if they were true or with no clear rationale. Individual differences influence children’s processing of misinformation. Here, we explore how two contextual cues (children’s conflicting first-hand knowledge and different information sources) affect their ability to correctly interpret and respond to misinformation. 133 three-year-olds from the northeastern United States searched for a hidden object after it had traveled down one of two criss-crossing tubes. Children played this game by themselves (baseline), with a deceptive human (intentionally incorrect about the location of the object), a broken human (unintentionally incorrect), or a broken machine (incapable of intentions and incorrect). Half of the children could see the object as it traveled down the tubes (knowledgeable group), and the other half could not (no-knowledge group). With this first-hand knowledge, children were more likely to search correctly when playing by themselves. Information source further impacted children’s responses. Responding to a deceptive human was the most challenging: knowledgeable children searched randomly; unknowledgeable children inappropriately deferred to the deceptive experimenter. But when knowledgeable children played with either the broken human or the broken machine, they had as many correct searches as when they played alone. Context may have its limits when it comes to influencing children’s responses to misinformation. Specifically, although first-hand knowledge appears to help 3-year-olds correctly respond to some forms of incorrect information, it may not be enough to help them overcome misinformation from explicitly deceptive sources.