How Kids Judge What They're Told: A Turkish Study

The Study

Kids are like little detectives, always figuring out who to trust. A recent study looked at how Turkish-speaking kids, aged four and six, decide if what they're told is reliable. They used special words in Turkish to see if kids could tell the difference between someone making a guess and someone repeating what they heard.

First Test: Guess vs. Rumor

First, the kids had to guess who was more trustworthy:

• Someone who made an educated guess
• Someone who just repeated a rumor

Results:

• Both age groups thought the guesser was more reliable.
• The six-year-olds were even better at this than the four-year-olds.

Second Test: The "Blicket" Challenge

Next, the kids were introduced to a new object called a "blicket." They were told it was magnetic, but the way they were told this varied:

• Some heard a guess
• Some heard a rumor
• Others heard a general statement

Results:

• Four-year-olds were more likely to believe and use the information when it was presented as a general statement.
• Six-year-olds were pretty much the same in all cases.

Key Findings

• As kids grow, they get better at judging who to trust, but their ability to apply that information changes too.
• Even though the kids thought the guesser was more reliable, they didn't necessarily believe the guess more than the rumor.
• This suggests that understanding reliability and applying it are two different skills that develop at different rates.