title: Accuracy, confidence, and calibration: how young children and adults assess credibility.
abstract: Do children and adults use the same cues to judge whether someone is a reliable source of information? In 4 experiments, we investigated whether children (ages 5 and 6) and adults used information regarding accuracy, confidence, and calibration (i.e., how well an informant's confidence predicts the likelihood of being correct) to judge informants' credibility. We found that both children and adults used information about confidence and accuracy to judge credibility; however, only adults used information about informants' calibration. Adults discredited informants who exhibited poor calibration, but children did not. Requiring adult participants to complete a secondary task while evaluating informants' credibility impaired their ability to make use of calibration information. Thus, children and adults may differ in how they infer credibility because of the cognitive demands of using calibration.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400, USA. tenney@virginia.edu
authors: Elizabeth R
authors: ER
authors: Tenney
authors: Jenna E
authors: JE
authors: Small
authors: Robyn L
authors: RL
authors: Kondrad
authors: Vikram K
authors: VK
authors: Jaswal
authors: Barbara A
authors: BA
authors: Spellman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D002138:Calibration; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D009275:Names; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012938:Social Perception; D035502:Trust / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult