Many adults will admit to telling white lies to children to make their lives a little easier.
But
research has found children can spot this tactic, and can even tell
when their parents or teachers are deliberately withholding information
from them.
Once
spotted, a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found
children will then try to fill in the gaps in the information
themselves.
Children can tell when adults are omitting
information or bending the truth, (illustrated with a stock image),
according to a new report from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Once this tactic has been spotted, the children will try to
fill in gaps in the information themselves
ESTABLISHING A CHILD'S TRUST
Children aged six and seven were given a toy to explore on their own until they discovered all of its functions.
One group of children received a toy that had four buttons, each of which activated a different function, while the other group was given a toy with one button.
Then the children watched as a ‘teacher’ demonstrated the toy – only pointing out one function.
The children were asked to rate how helpful the teacher was, using a scale from 1 to 20.
Children who knew the toy had three more undemonstrated functions gave much lower ratings than children who knew it was the toy’s only function.
In a follow-up experiment, the same ‘teacher’ demonstrated a second toy and only demonstrated one of its four functions.
Children who had previously seen a demonstration they knew to be incomplete explored the toy more thoroughly, suggesting that they did not trust the teacher to be fully informative.
One group of children received a toy that had four buttons, each of which activated a different function, while the other group was given a toy with one button.
Then the children watched as a ‘teacher’ demonstrated the toy – only pointing out one function.
The children were asked to rate how helpful the teacher was, using a scale from 1 to 20.
Children who knew the toy had three more undemonstrated functions gave much lower ratings than children who knew it was the toy’s only function.
In a follow-up experiment, the same ‘teacher’ demonstrated a second toy and only demonstrated one of its four functions.
Children who had previously seen a demonstration they knew to be incomplete explored the toy more thoroughly, suggesting that they did not trust the teacher to be fully informative.
Determining
who to trust is an important skill to learn at an early age because so
much of our knowledge about the world comes from other people, explained
Hyowon Gweon, lead author of the paper which is published in the journal Cognition.
‘When
someone provides us information, we not only learn about what is being
taught, we also learn something about that person. If the information is
accurate and complete, then you might also trust that person in the
future,’ she said.
‘But
if this person has taught you something wrong, has made a mistake, or
has omitted something that’s important for you to know, then you might
want to suspend your trust, be sceptical of the information he provides
in the future, and even seek other sources of information.’
The
study builds on a 2011 paper in which the team of researchers
investigated how children behave when a teacher explained only one
function of a toy that can do four different things.
They found children spent most of their time exploring only the function the teacher had demonstrated.
However,
children who received no instruction spent more time exploring all of
the toy’s features and ended up discovering more of them.
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