title: Children's trust in unexpected oral versus printed suggestions: limitations of the power of print.
abstract: Children have a bias to trust spoken testimony, yet early readers have an even stronger bias to trust print. Here, we ask how enduring is the influence of printed testimony: Can the learning be applied to new scenarios? Using hybrid pictures more dominant in one animal species (e.g., squirrel) than another (e.g., rabbit), we examined 3-6-year-olds' (N = 130) acceptance of an unexpected, non-dominant label suggested only orally or via print. Consistent with previous findings, early readers, but not pre-readers, accepted printed labels more frequently than when spoken. Children were then presented with identical but unlabelled hybrid exemplars and frequently applied the non-dominant labels to these. Despite early readers' prior greater acceptance of text, when oral suggestions were accepted they retained a greater influence. Findings highlight potential implications for educators regarding knowledge being applied to new scenarios: For early readers, unexpected information from text may be fragile, while a greater confidence might be placed in such information gained from spoken testimony.
authors.affiliation: University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Eyden
authors.forename: Elizabeth J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Robinson
authors.forename: Shiri
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Einav
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013404:Suggestion; D035502:Trust / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Testimony; children; knowledge; literacy; print; trust; unexpected suggestions