Rights statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Bazhydai, M, Westermann, G, Parise, E. “I don't know but I know who to ask”: 12‐month‐olds actively seek information from knowledgeable adults. Dev Sci. 2020; 23:e12938. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12938 which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/desc.12938 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
Accepted author manuscript, 1.33 MB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - “I don’t know but I know who to ask”
T2 - 12-month-olds actively seek information from knowledgeable adults
AU - Bazhydai, Marina
AU - Westermann, Gert
AU - Parise, Eugenio
N1 - This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Bazhydai, M, Westermann, G, Parise, E. “I don't know but I know who to ask”: 12‐month‐olds actively seek information from knowledgeable adults. Dev Sci. 2020; 23:e12938. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12938 which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/desc.12938 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
PY - 2020/9/1
Y1 - 2020/9/1
N2 - Active social communication is an effective way for infants to learn about the world. Do pre‐verbal and pre‐pointing infants seek epistemic information from their social partners when motivated to obtain information they cannot discover independently? The present study investigated whether 12‐month‐olds (N = 30) selectively seek information from knowledgeable adults in situations of referential uncertainty. In a live experiment, infants were introduced to two unfamiliar adults, an Informant (reliably labeling objects) and a Non‐Informant (equally socially engaging, but ignorant about object labels). At test, infants were asked to make an impossible choice—locate a novel referent among two novel objects. When facing epistemic uncertainty—but not at other phases of the procedure—infants selectively referred to the Informant rather than the Non‐Informant. These results show that pre‐verbal infants use social referencing to actively and selectively seek information from social partners as part of their interrogative communicative toolkit. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/23dLPsa-fAYResearch highlightsTwelve‐month‐olds reliably assessed the informative potential of the available social partners and selectively queried the best source only when information was needed.Pre‐verbal infants used social referencing to actively and selectively seek information from social partners as part of their interrogative communicative toolkit.Social referencing served as a communicative means to seek epistemic rather than emotionally laden information in the situation of referential uncertainty.Results indicate that infants actively participate in the cultural interpersonal process of knowledge transmission, using basic non‐verbal communicative tools at their disposal.
AB - Active social communication is an effective way for infants to learn about the world. Do pre‐verbal and pre‐pointing infants seek epistemic information from their social partners when motivated to obtain information they cannot discover independently? The present study investigated whether 12‐month‐olds (N = 30) selectively seek information from knowledgeable adults in situations of referential uncertainty. In a live experiment, infants were introduced to two unfamiliar adults, an Informant (reliably labeling objects) and a Non‐Informant (equally socially engaging, but ignorant about object labels). At test, infants were asked to make an impossible choice—locate a novel referent among two novel objects. When facing epistemic uncertainty—but not at other phases of the procedure—infants selectively referred to the Informant rather than the Non‐Informant. These results show that pre‐verbal infants use social referencing to actively and selectively seek information from social partners as part of their interrogative communicative toolkit. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/23dLPsa-fAYResearch highlightsTwelve‐month‐olds reliably assessed the informative potential of the available social partners and selectively queried the best source only when information was needed.Pre‐verbal infants used social referencing to actively and selectively seek information from social partners as part of their interrogative communicative toolkit.Social referencing served as a communicative means to seek epistemic rather than emotionally laden information in the situation of referential uncertainty.Results indicate that infants actively participate in the cultural interpersonal process of knowledge transmission, using basic non‐verbal communicative tools at their disposal.
KW - information seeking
KW - social referencing
KW - referential uncertainty
KW - active social learning
KW - epistemic knowledge
KW - knowledge transmission
U2 - 10.1111/desc.12938
DO - 10.1111/desc.12938
M3 - Journal article
VL - 23
JO - Developmental Science
JF - Developmental Science
SN - 1363-755X
IS - 5
M1 - e12938
ER -