title: Controlling the message: preschoolers' use of information to teach and deceive others.
abstract: Effective communication entails the strategic presentation of information; good communicators present representative information to their listeners-information that is both consistent with the concept being communicated and also unlikely to support another concept a listener might consider. The present study examined whether preschool-age children effectively select information to manipulate others' semantic knowledge, by testing how children choose information to teach or deceive their listeners. Results indicate that preschoolers indeed effectively select information to meet some specific communicative goals. When asked to teach others, children selected information that effectively spanned the concept of interest and avoided overly restrictive or overly general information; when asked to deceive others, they selected information consistent with the intended deceptive messages under some circumstances. Thus, preschool children possess remarkable abilities to select the best information to manipulate what others believe.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New York University New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Marjorie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rhodes
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Rutgers University Newark, NJ, USA.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bonawitz
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Rutgers University Newark, NJ, USA.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shafto
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New York University New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Annie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Rutgers University Newark, NJ, USA.
authors.forename: Leyla
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Caglar
keywords: cognitive development; deception; evidence selection; pedagogy; teaching