Children's understanding of knowledge acquisition: the tendency for children to report that they have always known what they have just learned.
Children's attention to knowledge-acquisition events was examined in 4 experiments in which children were taught novel facts and subsequently asked how long they had known the new information. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds tended to claim they had known novel animal facts for a long time and also reported that other children would know the novel facts. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, using facts associated with chemistry demonstrations. In Experiments 3 and 4, children were taught new color words. 5-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, distinguished between novel and familiar color words, reporting they had not known the novel words before the test session, but they had always known the familiar words. 4-year-olds in Experiment 4 were better able to distinguish novel and familiar color words when the teaching of the novel words was an explicit and salient part of the procedure.
Taylor
M
M
Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene 97403.
Esbensen
B M
BM
Bennett
R T
RT
D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male