Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T16:25:04.673Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Children's understanding of the evidential connotation of ‘know’ in relation to overestimation of their own knowledge*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Peter Mitchell  and
Elizabeth J. Robinson
Peter Mitchell*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Elizabeth J. Robinson
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
*
Department of Psychology, University College of Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examined five- to seven-year-olds' assumptions about the experiential connotation of ‘I know that's X’. In Experiment 1 children tried to identify which of a set of unfamiliar targets had a given name (X), and after they had chosen, we enquired either whether they KNEW their chosen item was (X) or whether they were SURE. Six- to seven-year-olds (N = 39) judged that they were sure more often than they judged that they knew, which suggests that although they experienced confidence that they had chosen correctly, they assumed it would be inappropriate to judge ‘know’, because this would imply an experiential basis, which was absent. Five- to six-year-olds (N = 36) did not discriminate between the two kinds of question. In Experiment 2, children could infer which item was a named unfamiliar cartoon character by ruling out familiar distractors. Six- to seven-year-olds (N = 35) judged that they knew they had picked the right one much more often than they judged that they knew their chosen picture was (target name). Again, five- to six-year-olds (N = 44) did not discriminate between the two kinds of question. This demonstrates powerfully that the older children held an experiential connotation of ‘I know that's X’, since they avoided such judgements even when they knew by inference they had chosen correctly.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , February 1992 , pp. 167 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The work reported here was supported financially by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK.

References

REFERENCES

Bassano, D. (1985). Five-year-olds' understanding of ‘savoir’ and ‘croire’. Journal of Child Language 12, 417–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beal, C. R. & Flavell, J. H. (1982). The effects of increasing the salience of message ambiguities on kindergartners' evaluations of communicative success and message adequacy. Developmental Psychology 18, 43–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fabricius, W. F., Sophian, C. & Wellman, H. M. (1987). Young children's sensitivity to logical necessity in their inferential search behavior. Child Development 58, 409–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flavell, J. H., Speer, J. R., Green, F. L. & August, D. L. (1981). The development of comprehension monitoring and knowledge about communication. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 46, serial no. 192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, C. N. (1982). Acquisition of mental verbs and the concept of mind. In Kuczaj, S. A. (ed.), Language Development. Vol. 1. Syntax and semantics, (pp. 455–478). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Johnson, C. N. & Maratsos, M. P. (1977). Early comprehension of mental verbs: think and know. Child Development 48, 1743–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, C. N. & Wellman, H. M. (1980). Children's developing understanding of mental verbs: remember, know and guess. Child Development 51, 1095–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, P. & Kiparsky, C. (1970). Fact. In Bierwisch, M. & Heidolph, K. (eds), Progress in Linguistics. Paris: Mouton.Google Scholar
Koriat, A., Lichtenstein, S. & Fischhoff, B. (1980). Reasons for confidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 6, 107–118.Google Scholar
Lichtenstein, S., Fischhoff, B. & Phillips, L. D. (1982). Calibration of probabilities: the state of the art to 1980. In Kahneman, D., Slovic, P. & Tversky, A. (eds), Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. (1977). Realizing that you don't understand: a preliminary investigation. Child Development 48, 986–92.Google Scholar
Miscione, J. L., Marvin, R. S., O'Brien, R. G. & Greenberg, M. T. (1978). A developmental study of preschool children's understanding of the words ‘know’ and ‘guess’. Child Development 49, 1107–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, P. & Robinson, E. J. (1990). When do children over-estimate their knowledge of unfamiliar targets? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 50, 81–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, C. & Davidge, J. (1989). The development of mental terms: pragmatics or semantics? Journal of Child Language 16, 633–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robinson, E. J. & Mitchell, P. (1990). Children's failure to make judgements of undecidability when they are ignorant. International Journal of Behavioral Development 13, 467–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, E. J. & Robinson, W. P. (1983). Children's uncertainty about the interpretation of ambiguous messages. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 36, 81–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, E. J. & Whittaker, S. J. (1987). Children's conceptions of relations between messages, meanings and reality. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 5, 81–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sodian, B. (1988). Children's attributions of knowledge to the listener in a referential communication task. Child Development 59, 378–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somerville, S. C., Hadkinson, B. A. & Greenberg, C. (1979). Two levels of inferential behaviour in young children. Child Development 50, 119–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sophian, C. & Somerville, S. C. (1988). Early developments in logical reasoning: considering alternative possibilities. Cognitive Development 3, 183–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, D. (1986). Aspects of teaching and learning. In Richards, M. & Light, P. (eds), Children of social worlds. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar