Young children prefer to learn from confident people

January 27, 2020

Science Daily/University of British Columbia

Researchers found that young children between the age of four and five not only prefer to learn from people who appear confident, they also keep track of how well the person's confidence has matched with their knowledge and accuracy in the past (a concept called 'calibration') and avoid learning new information from people who have a history of being overconfident.

At a time when scams seem all around us and fake news appears to be on the rise, you might be relieved to know that even young children show some impressive skills when it comes to identifying poor sources of information, suggests new research from the University of British Columbia.

In a new study published today in the Public Library of Science ONE (PLOS ONE), researchers found that young children between the age of four and five not only prefer to learn from people who appear confident, they also keep track of how well the person's confidence has matched with their knowledge and accuracy in the past (a concept called 'calibration') and avoid learning new information from people who have a history of being overconfident. This is the first research of its kind to demonstrate that children track a person's calibration.

"We now know that children are even more savvy at social learning, learning from others, than we previously thought," said Susan Birch, the study's lead author and a UBC psychology associate professor. "They don't just prefer to learn from anyone who is confident; they avoid learning from people who have confidently given wrong information in the past."

Birch says this ability makes children less likely to fall prey to misinformation and ultimately ensures they are learning the most accurate information.

Interestingly, despite these sophisticated reasoning abilities in young children, they still don't have an adult-like understanding of confidence, and its opposite hesitancy, even by eight years old.

"Children appear to treat hesitancy as separate from, rather than the opposite of, confidence," said Birch. "They don't fully understand what it means to be hesitant and the inferences they apply to whether a person's confidence is justified don't get applied to hesitancy."

For example, adults recognize responding hesitantly is justified when you don't know the answer to something, but the children in their experiments did not recognize this.

Across three experiments, the researchers tested 662 children between the ages of three and 12. The researchers showed them pre-recorded videos of actors displaying justified and unjustified confidence as well as justified and unjustified hesitancy and then documented who the children preferred to learn new words from and who they found smarter.

The researchers say that the children may be quicker to learn that a person's confidence can be justified (match with their level of knowledge) than to learn that a person's hesitancy can also be justified, because their brains are wired to attend more to clues than misinformation. In other words, learning to trust people when they are justifiably hesitant may be harder than learning to mistrust people when they are unjustifiably confident. More research will need to be conducted to find out when children start having a better understanding of hesitancy.

As a result of this study, researchers recommend that parents and educators should not only pay attention to what they're communicating to children but also how they're doing it, as it may undermine their credibility in the long term.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200127145459.htm

Families and schools may play key roles in promoting adolescent self-confidence

March 13, 2019

Science Daily/Penn State

Self-confidence is critical for teens as they prepare for the challenges of adulthood, and both families and schools may together play a vital role in boosting adolescents' confidence even in the face of difficulties with family, according to researchers.

The researchers examined how a variety of factors affected adolescents' self-efficacy -- a person's belief that they have the ability to overcome challenges and be successful, similar to self-confidence.

They found that adolescents who frequently witnessed their parents arguing or engaging in other forms of conflict experienced lower self-efficacy later on. But, success in school and support from peers were able to help compensate for family problems, and even boost self-efficacy higher than those losses.

Devin McCauley, a graduate student in Human Development and Family Studies, said the findings suggest that many factors can contribute to the development of a teen's confidence, and that schools may be an untapped resource for helping adolescents develop self-efficacy.

"Oftentimes, adolescents are in school all day where they're focusing on academics," McCauley said. "But this study suggests that we should continue thinking about schools in a developmental context, where we look beyond academics and at new ways to help improve other aspects of adolescent wellbeing."

Greg Fosco, associate professor of human development and family studies, added that the study -- recently published in the Journal of Adolescence -- is also a good reminder for parents about the importance of healthy co-parenting relationships.

"The healthier you can make the relationship with your partner, the better that is for your child," Fosco said. "Parents can get really focused on how they parent, and that's important, but their relationship with one another is an important source of strength for the family and for their children's development. Investing in a healthy couple relationship is going to promote a positive outcome for the child."

McCauley was inspired by his time as a school teacher to explore whether schools could help compensate for family-related losses in self-efficacy. He added that while self-efficacy is important at any age, it may be particularly important during adolescence.

"One of the goals of adolescence is to start to gain independence, form new social groups and eventually, down the line, start a family of their own," McCauley said. "If, as you encounter challenges in your life, your constant thought is 'I can't do this,' that can be stifling. But, if you have high self-efficacy, you're going to continue to pursue your goals, find more success, and that's going to reinforce and build on itself."

For the study, McCauley and the other researchers used data from 768 families, which included two-parent households with at least one adolescent in the home. Data was collected twice when the adolescents were in sixth grade and once when they were in seventh grade.

At each time point, adolescents reported data on conflict they witnessed between their parents, how threatened they felt by that conflict, feelings of self-efficacy, their school success and how much they felt supported by their peers.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that higher levels of conflict between parents was linked to adolescents' feeling that their sense of security in the family was threatened. And this lower sense of security in turn was linked to diminished self-efficacy. But, greater success in school as well as feeling supported by peers contributed to higher levels of self-efficacy, enough to compensate for the losses stemming from teens' exposure to conflict between parents.

"If these adolescents are experiencing a lot of conflict at home, that can be offset to an extent by feeling successful in school or in their peer relationships," Fosco said. "Even though interparental conflict at home is a risk factor for undermining their self-efficacy, these positive experiences out of the home will help offset damages to their belief in themselves, in their ability to overcome challenges.

McCauley said the study suggests there are multiple ways to help promote self-efficacy in adolescents, and that one set of solutions may not fit all teens.

"This gives us different avenues to work within when it comes to intervention or prevention strategies," McCauley said. "If it's difficult to work with the family, if it's hard to get them to come to programs or sessions, we can help teens be successful in other areas of their life. Adolescents are often in school day in and day out for nine months out of the year, and we can build this into how the school functions."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190313114739.htm