White Men in White coats: Children’s Attributions of Scientific Knowledge based on Race and Gender

Children use others’ characteristics (e.g., intelligence and niceness) to evaluate how much a person knows (Landrum et al., 2016). However, little is known about how gender and race influence children\u27s perception of adults\u27 scientific knowledge. The current study examined how children ages 5-8 (N = 25; 11 girls, 14 boys) perceive adults’ scientific knowledge. In the first task, children saw 8 different adults of varying race and gender (White man, White woman, Black man, Black woman) and rated their knowledge using a five-point scale. Children then chose one person out of two adults who they thought knew more about a scientific topic across 12 trials. In the last task, children saw 4 different adults of varying race and gender and chose which person was the scientist. Preliminary analyses showed no significant differences between children’s knowledge ratings and selection of Black and White men and women. However, children chose White men as scientists in the greatest proportion of trials. The current study will expand our understanding of how children’s perception of an adult’s scientific knowledge is impacted by the adults’ race and gender

How Children Seek Out Information from Technological and Human Informants

Abstract Members of the current generation of young children have been exposed to technological informants, primarily consisting of devices that search the Internet for information, nearly since birth. However, little is known about how young children explore information using these digital sources. To address this issue, 30 preschool children generated questions about unfamiliar animals that were to be answered by either a human or technological informant (i.e., an Internet search program). Children also completed a measure of biological and psychological attributions to different types of information sources. Overall, children generated similar numbers of questions for each informant, and a similar proportion of their questions were causal in nature. Children also attributed few biological and psychological characteristics to the Internet search program. This suggests that, despite understanding that technological devices share few biological and psychological properties with people, young children seek out information in similar ways from human and technological information sources

Stay and Play with Mickey Mouse: Familiar Characters Increase Children’s Exploratory Play

When children are introduced to a novel toy, they explore to discover how the toy works, but do not always discover all of the functions (Bonawitz et al., 2011). Research has shown that children prefer objects with a familiar character on them (Danovitch & Mills, 2014). This study investigates whether the presence of a familiar character’s image on a novel toy encourages exploratory play. Four- and 5-year-olds (n = 40) were presented with a novel toy, containing 5 different functions, that either displayed an image of their favorite familiar character or an image of that character’s color scheme. Children were given up to 5 minutes to play with the toy. Children’s play was coded for the number of functions they discovered and how long they played with the toy. Results showed no significant difference between conditions for number of functions discovered. However, children who were given a toy with their favorite character’s image on it spent significantly more time exploring the toy than children who had a toy with the character’s color scheme on it. These findings suggest that seeing a familiar character on an object promotes children’s exploration of that object.https://ir.library.louisville.edu/uars/1010/thumbnail.jp

Phone a Friend or Ask Alexa? Children’s Trust in Voice-Activated Devices

Voice-activated devices such as Google Home, Siri, and Alexa are in many homes and children are interacting with these devices. It is unclear if they treat these devices the way they treat human informants. Children prefer human informants that are reliable and familiar. This study examined whether children believe voice-activated devices provide accurate information. Participants included 40 4- and 5-year-olds and 40 7- and 8-year-olds. Children were introduced to two informants: the experimenter’s good friend and the experimenter’s new device. Children heard questions about personal information (e.g., the experimenter’s favorite color), facts that do not change (e.g., the color of a kiwano fruit), and timely information (e.g., which state had the most rain yesterday). After the informant provided an answer, the child indicated whether the answer was correct. Older children were significantly more likely to trust the device’s stable fact responses and the human informant’s personal fact responses. Surprisingly, younger children did not show greater trust for either informant for stable facts, but were significantly more likely to trust personal facts given by the device. These findings suggest that younger children have greater difficulty than older children trusting the appropriate informant, and thus need more guidance from adults to understand and use voice-activated devices.https://ir.library.louisville.edu/uars/1036/thumbnail.jp

Young Humeans: the role of emotions in children's evaluation of moral reasoning abilities.

Abstract Three experiments investigated whether children in grades K, 2, and 4 (n = 144) view emotional comprehension as important in solving moral dilemmas. The experiments asked whether a human or an artificially intelligent machine would be best at solving different types of problems, ranging from moral and emotional to nonmoral and pragmatic. In Experiment 1, children in all age groups indicated that a human would be superior to a computer not only at comprehending emotions, but also at solving moral dilemmas. In Experiment 2, older children also indicated that a human could solve moral dilemmas better than a 'robot' with human-like perceptual and physical abilities. Experiment 3 further demonstrated that these effects were not solely due to a bias towards humans. Thus, children as young as age 5 view emotional understanding as an important element for moral, but not for nonmoral, reasoning, suggesting that the basis for Humean intuitions emerges early in life