Informants' Traits Weigh Heavily in Young Children's Trust in Testimony and in Their Epistemic Inferences

This study examined how informants' traits affect how children seek information, trust testimony, and make inferences about informants' knowledge. Eighty‐one 3‐ to 6‐year‐olds and 26 adults completed tasks where they requested and endorsed information provided by one of two informants with conflicting traits (e.g., honesty vs. dishonesty). Participants also completed tasks where they simultaneously considered informants' traits and visual access to information when inferring their knowledge and trusting their testimony. Children and adults preferred to ask and endorse information provided by people who are nice, smart, and honest. Moreover, these traits influenced the knowledge that young children attributed to informants. Children younger than 5 years of age reported that people with positive traits were knowledgeable even when they lacked access to relevant information.     

Children's Selective Trust in Promises

There has been extensive research into the development of selective trust in testimony, but little is known about the development of selective trust in promises. The present research investigates children's (N = 264) selective trust in others' promises to help. In Study 1, 6-year-olds selectively trusted speakers who had previously kept a promise. In Study 2, 5-year-olds displayed selective trust for speakers who had previously kept a prosocial promise (promise to help). In Study 3, 5-year-olds trusted a speaker, who kept a prosocial promise, over a helper. These data suggest that from the age of 5 children show selective trust in others’ promises using prosociality, promise keeping, or both to inform their judgments.     

真实与虚假:未成年人言词证据判断的多元方法

由于未成年人身心发展的不成熟,导致未成年证人在司法实践中受到一定偏见,甚至在很多情况下未成年人证言得不到采纳。如果仅仅因为未成年人这一个身份而排除其作为证人的资格,则不利于实现司法审判中的公平正义。文章从未成年人言词证据的影响因素和缺陷出发,将传统方法与现代方法相结合,分析判断未成年人言词证据真实性的多元方法。在保护未成年人的同时,提高办案效率。未成年人是一个年龄跨度相对较大的群体,不同发展阶段身心发展不同,因此,需要针对其不同发展阶段的不同特点运用恰当地审查判断方法。     

Young Children's Trust Beliefs in Peers: Relations to Social Competence and Interactive Behaviors in a Peer Group

Research Findings: The aim of this study was to explore the relations between children's trust beliefs and social competence as well as social preference. In addition, this study examined how children with different trust belief profiles may differ in their peer interactive behaviors. A total of 47 children ages 5 to 6 participated in this study. Data were collected via observation of play behaviors, a teacher-rated social competence scale, and a child interview. The results indicated that children's trust beliefs in friends’ promise-keeping behaviors were positively associated with intrapersonal and interpersonal domains of social competence. Children who had greater trust in non-friend classmates’ promise-keeping behaviors tended to be sociable in a group, polite, and more preferred, and they were less likely to be disliked by peers. Children with different trust profiles exhibited differential interactive behaviors with peers. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest that parents and early childhood educators should pay more attention to the extent to which young children trust their close friends and familiar peers, especially in terms of keeping promises. Adults may model their efforts in keeping their promises made to children and enhance children's capacity to reciprocate trust in close relationships. Adults can help children differentiate their trust based on the intimacy of relationships.     

The Kansas Family and Children's Trust Fund: funding prevention programs in the eighties

The Kansas Family and Children's Trust Fund is an innovative approach to developing funding for community-based family violence prevention programs. Using a legislated trust fund which generates money from marriage license fees, the program has been developed based on three assumptions. First, funding at the federal level for programs to prevent family violence has probably reached its peak and has never been sufficiently secure as to allow for continuity in prevention programs from year to year. Second, there is a trend toward allowing local communities to assume a greater portion of the responsibility for developing social welfare programming. Third, in the long run more can be accomplished with a small amount of money given to a community-based organization which efficiently uses volunteer time than a larger amount of money given to an agency which has a large infrastructure to support. Information on the procedure utilized to enable passage of the Trust Fund legislation is included as well as a discussion of issues that arose in the legislation process. In addition, an explanation of the current funding procedures for accessing Trust Fund moneys is given along with examples of the types of programs that have received funding. Finally, examples are provided of similar approaches that have been used in other states as well as a call for additional innovative approaches to providing funding for child abuse prevention programs.     

St. Ives Pathfinder Children's Trust: From Idea to Reality and Further

As the formal arrangements for Pathfinder Children's Trusts across England come to a close, and many Authorities move to firm arrangements for integrated children's services, this is an opportune moment for one pathfinder project to reflect upon its experiences over the past years and to share some of its learning about process issues. This article traces the progress of social inclusion work from its inception in the St. Ives cluster of schools through to its present-day position as a Children's Trust. As well as explaining the underlying theory and rationale for the work, a number of sound, practical lessons and pointers are offered. The article also identifies celebratory high-points of the project and highlights some implications for future developments within the context of Every Child Matters, via extended schools and children's centres.     

生理实验教学中动物福利问题探讨

在生理学实验教学中,动物常被用作实验对象,实验教学中动物福利的问题一直被实验教学者关注.代替、减少和优化动物实验的“3R”原则的提出,为解决这些问题提供了有效的途径和方法.综述了“3R”原则的形成与发展,以及现代“3R”理论研究的概况,并介绍了“3R”在实验教学中的应用.     

St. Ives Pathfinder Children's Trust: From Idea to Reality and Further

Abstract

As the formal arrangements for Pathfinder Children's Trusts across England come to a close, and many Authorities move to firm arrangements for integrated children's services, this is an opportune moment for one pathfinder project to reflect upon its experiences over the past years and to share some of its learning about process issues. This article traces the progress of social inclusion work from its inception in the St. Ives cluster of schools through to its present-day position as a Children's Trust. As well as explaining the underlying theory and rationale for the work, a number of sound, practical lessons and pointers are offered. The article also identifies celebratory high-points of the project and highlights some implications for future developments within the context of Every Child Matters, via extended schools and children's centres.     

Evaluating Playfulness: Construct Validity of the Children's Playfulness Scale

This study was designed to examine the underlying structure of the Children's Playfulness Scale (CPS). The CPS was administered to 602 children who were randomly divided into two groups (calibration and validation group). The calibration group (n= 279) included 137 boys and 142 girls, and the validation group (n= 323) included 162 boys and 161 girls, ranging in age from 4 to 6 years. A one-factor model was postulated and supported. According to the model, 5 variables measuring children's playfulness loaded on one factor (playfulness). In addition, the proposed model was found to be invariant across the two groups. Good cross-generalizability of the CPS appears to support its validity. Educators working in a preschool/kindergarten setting may use it with confidence when evaluating children's playfulness.     

The Influence of First‐Hand Testimony and Hearsay on Children's Belief in the Improbable

Children (3.5–8.5 years; n = 105) heard claims about the occurrence of improbable or impossible events, then were asked whether the events could really happen. Some claims were based on informants' first‐hand observations and others were hearsay. A baseline group (n = 56) reported their beliefs about these events without hearing testimony. Neither first‐hand claims nor hearsay influenced beliefs about impossible events, which remained low across the age range. Hearsay (but not first‐hand claims) did influence beliefs about improbable events. Preschoolers expressed greater belief following hearsay, compared to their beliefs following first‐hand claims and compared to the baseline group's beliefs. By contrast, older children expressed less belief following hearsay, compared to their beliefs following first‐hand claims and compared to the baseline group's beliefs.     

Young Children's Trust in Their Mother's Claims: Longitudinal Links With Attachment Security in Infancy

In a longitudinal study of attachment, children ( N = 147) aged 50 and 61 months heard their mother and a stranger make conflicting claims. In 2 tasks, the available perceptual cues were equally consistent with either person's claim but children generally accepted the mother's claims over those of the stranger. In a 3rd task, the perceptual cues favored the stranger's claims, and children generally accepted her claims over those of the mother. However, children's pattern of responding varied by attachment status. The strategy of relying on the mother or the stranger, depending on the available perceptual cues, was especially evident among secure children. Insecure-avoidant children displayed less reliance on their mother's claims, irrespective of the available cues, whereas insecure-resistant children displayed more.     

Neuroscience and Education: Blind Spots in a Strange Relationship

This article—mainly referring to the situation in Germany—consists of three parts. In a first section the current presence of neurosciences in the public discourse will be described in order to illuminate the background which is relevant for contemporary educational thinking. The prefix ‘neuro‐’ is ubiquitous today and therefore concepts like ‘neuropedagogy’ or ‘neurodidactics’ seem to be in the mainstream of modern thinking. In the second part of the article the perspective changes from the public discourse to the disciplinary discourse; a brief excursus into developmental psychiatry, neuropsychology and modern psychoanalysis will be made in order to demonstrate how the results of neuroscientific research are integrated in their theoretical frameworks. These three disciplines have no difficulty in integrating neuroscientific findings because each of them possesses a systematic core composed of ‘native concepts’. In contrast to them, educational theory has much more difficulty with such integration, as will be shown in the third part of the essay. On the one hand, neuroscientific thinking seems to be able to dominate education rather easily and without great resistance, especially in the fields of early childhood education, instruction and learning—mainly by simplifying educational processes and by reducing the complexity of the educational task to a mere ‘relationship problem’. On the other hand, this attraction of neuroscience in education might be understood as the reflection of a theoretical deficit in educational theory itself, with the significance of affect and emotion not receiving proper attention.     

The Roles of Intuition and Informants’ Expertise in Children's Epistemic Trust

This study examined how children's intuitions and informants’ expertise influence children's trust in informants’ claims. Three‐ to 8‐year‐olds (N = 192) watched videos in which experts (animal/biology experts or artifact/physics experts) made either intuitively plausible or counterintuitive claims about obscure animals or artifacts. Claims fell either within or beyond experts’ domains of expertise. Children of all ages were more trusting of claims made by informants with relevant, as opposed to irrelevant, expertise. Children also showed greater acceptance of intuitive rather than counterintuitive claims, a differentiation that increased with age as they developed firmer intuitions about what can ordinarily happen. In summary, children's trust in testimony depends on whether informants have the relevant expertise as well as on children's own developing intuitions.     

The Roles of Privacy and Trust in Children's Evaluations and Explanations of Digital Tracking

A “digital revolution” has introduced new privacy violations concerning access to information stored on electronic devices. The present two studies assessed how U.S. children ages 5–17 and adults (N = 416; 55% female; 67% white) evaluated those accessing digital information belonging to someone else, either location data (Study 1) or digital photos (Study 2). The trustworthiness of the tracker (Studies 1 and 2) and the privacy of the information (Study 2) were manipulated. At all ages, evaluations were more negative when the tracker was less trustworthy, and when information was private. However, younger children were substantially more positive overall about digital tracking than older participants. These results, yielding primarily medium-to-large effect sizes, suggest that with age, children increasingly appreciate digital privacy considerations.     

Signposts in a Strange Land: a response to Peter Posch

This paper develops my previous response as a discussant to Posch's paper on the Environment and Schools Initiative (ENSI) project at ECER ‘95. It welcomes the insights into the dynamic relationship between environmental education, curriculum change and school development. The article draws attention to a number of research issues within the paper, focusing on the aims and principles of the ENSI project; the integration, dissemination and uptake of the research findings; and the appropriateness of its particular methodological approaches     

Knowledge from Testimony: Benefits and Dangers

Testimony is an important source of knowledge in many contexts, including that of education, but the notion of the teacher as testifier is not often discussed. Since much that is believed by individuals has come to them not from direct experience but by accepting the accounts of others, the trustworthiness of their interlocutors' testimonies, whether these be spoken, textual or electronic in form, is an important factor in determining whether or not they acquire true, justified beliefs. Testimonial trustworthiness is a combination of competence and sincerity, both of which tend to be high when a teacher testifies in her area of expertise. But in the world beyond the classroom there are situations in which the competence or sincerity of the testifier is low, so it is important that the learner acquires an epistemically‐virtuous, well‐attuned disposition towards testimony.     

Children's Participation in Evaluating the Role of New Information and Communication Technologies in Schools

The central thesis of the paper is that children should be accorded a greater role in the evaluation of the role of new information technologies in schools, that is, where possible they should be stakeholders who help shape the design, processes and interpretations of evaluation studies as well as informants who provide data for the study. Arguments for this position draw on children's special relationship with the new technologies as well as current movements in children's rights and the development of a new paradigm of childhood studies. The paper finishes with a discussion of some of the issues that might arise from involving children as stakeholders.     

Show and Tell: Demonstration as Practical Testimony

Two classic questions in epistemology concern whether knowledge is firstly propositional or firstly practical (the know-that/know-how debate) and whether testimony is a basic source of epistemic justification (the reductionism/anti-reductionism debate about testimony). In this paper, I consider the relationship between these two classic debates in epistemology. I hold that consideration of the two questions in tandem adds perspective to both debates. Firstly, considering the question of testimony within the know-that/know-how debate makes clear the necessity of developing a concept of practical testimony within the epistemology of practical knowledge. In this paper, I draw on Hawley's work to develop such a concept and call it ‘demonstration’. Secondly, considering the know-that/know-how debate in the epistemology of testimony sheds new light on the efficacy of testimony alone in transmitting knowledge. Because demonstration is not completely efficacious in transmitting know-how, I hold that the reductionism debate itself must diverge into propositional and practical halves. In the paper, I go on to identify two imperfect alliances: between intellectualism about know-how and anti-reductionism about testimony and between anti-intellectualism about know-how and reductionism about testimony. I also sketch out the importance of the concept of demonstration to understanding practical learning and teaching.     

Children's Trust in Previously Inaccurate Informants Who Were Well or Poorly Informed: When Past Errors Can Be Excused

Past research demonstrates that children learn from a previously accurate speaker rather than from a previously inaccurate one. This study shows that children do not necessarily treat a previously inaccurate speaker as unreliable. Rather, they appropriately excuse past inaccuracy arising from the speaker's limited information access. Children ( N = 67) aged 3, 4, and 5 years aimed to identify a hidden toy in collaboration with a puppet as informant. When the puppet had previously been inaccurate despite having full information, children tended to ignore what they were told and guess for themselves: They treated the puppet as unreliable in the longer term. However, children more frequently believed a currently well-informed puppet whose past inaccuracies arose legitimately from inadequate information access.