title: Visual access trumps gender in 3- and 4-year-old children's endorsement of testimony.
abstract: Several studies have investigated how preschoolers weigh social cues against epistemic cues when taking testimony into account. For instance, one study showed that 4- and 5-year-olds preferred to endorse the testimony of an informant who had the same gender as the children; by contrast, when the gender cue conflicted with an epistemic cue--past reliability--the latter trumped the former. None of the previous studies, however, has shown that 3-year-olds can prioritize an epistemic cue over a social cue. In Experiment 1, we offer the first demonstration that 3-year-olds favor testimony from a same-gender informant in the absence of other cues. In Experiments 2 and 3, an epistemic cue-visual access--was introduced. In those experiments, 3- and 4-year-olds endorsed the testimony of the informant with visual access regardless of whether it was a same-gender informant (Experiment 3) or a different-gender informant (Experiment 2). These results demonstrate that 3-year-olds are able to give more weight to an epistemic cue than to a social cue when evaluating testimony.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Nathalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Terrier
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Electronic address: stephane.bernard@unine.ch.
authors.forename: Stéphane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bernard
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Hugo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mercier
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Fabrice
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Clément
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012737:Sex Factors; D012919:Social Behavior; D035502:Trust / Q000523:psychology*; D014796:Visual Perception
keywords: Gender; Preschoolers; Social cognition; Testimony selection; Trust; Visual access