| How children learn about the world is a classical issue in developmental psychology.According to Piaget,children acquire direct experience through active exploration like a "little scientist".However,children can’t explore actively in many fields due to the restriction of cognitive ability and objective conditions.Therefore,they can only get the indirect experience by trusting the testimony from others.Clément et al.（2004）,thus,combined the point views of Piaget with the point views of Vygotsky and then created the research area of selective trust from the perspective of social interaction.Selective trust is the process in which the learners judge the reliability of informants according to the standards they believe in and then decide whether to accept the information provided by the reliable one.Children aged two have already been able to make decisions in selective trust.So,why do children deal with the information provided by others selectively? What is the basis that underpins this selectivity? Some studies found that the selective trust of children is based on heuristic judgment,while others point to rational trait reasoning.Hermes et al.（2018）put forward the dual-process account to explain this controversy.The dual-process account holds that there are two cognitive processes when children make a selective trust.Type Ⅰ processes operate fast,inflexibly,implicitly,and automatically.They are relatively independent of cognitive resources,are phylogenetically more ancient,and develop relatively early in ontogeny.In contrast,Type Ⅱ processes are relatively slow,flexible,explicit,and intentional.They depend strongly on the availability of knowledge and cognitive resources,and they develop later in phylogeny and ontogeny.Children can only use the type Ⅰ processes in the early stage of development.They can use both type Ⅰ and type Ⅱ processes in the later stage of development.What kind of cognitive process children use is restricted by their cognitive ability,cognitive load,conceptual knowledge and the task attributes.The evidence shows that the cognitive processes of selective trust during preschool age developed from heuristic judgment to rational trait reasoning and was affected by conceptual knowledge and capacity of working memory of children.Although the dual-process account can explain the existing results and get some evidence,three problems around the elements of cognitive processes for the selective trust of children still need to be solved.Firstly,how did the cognitive processes of selective trust develop after preschool age? And how does this development manifest itself in different tasks? Secondly,is the development of children’s cognitive abilities related to the development of children’s selective trust in the earlier stage of development? Thirdly,does the motivation of children affect their choice of different cognitive processes in the later stage of development?Therefore,the current research set up three test tasks of the same,the similar,and the irrelevant in terms of the relation between informants’ characteristics and test tasks based on the conflicting sources paradigm to solve these three problems.Current research computed the types of cognitive processes and the degree of using rational reasoning processes based on the performance of children in these three test tasks.The research selected the knowledge characteristics and the intention characteristics of informants as the starting point given that a reliable informant should not only have knowledge relevant to the task but also the willingness to provide accurate information.The research designed three sub-studies,which included eight experiments.Study 1 investigated the effects of task attributes on the development of children’s cognitive process underpinning selective trust.Study 1 was divided into four experiments according to the types of informant characteristics and the certainty of reasoning results.Experiment 1 and experiment 2 investigated the effects of informants’ knowledge and the presenting ways of knowledge on the cognitive processes of selective trust,and the developmental tendencies in uncertain and certain tasks respectively.Experiment 3 and experiment 4 investigated the effects of informants’ intention and the presenting ways of intention on the cognitive processes of selective trust,and the developmental tendencies in uncertain and certain tasks respectively.Experiment 1 to experiment 4 adopted a 2（the presenting ways of informant characteristics: behavioral evidence,trait label）×4（the age of children: 4-,5-,6-,and 9-years-old）two-factor between-subject design.The results show that（1）when the result of reasoning is uncertain in knowledge task,4-year-olds,5-year-olds,and 6-year-olds,under the condition of trait label,used heuristic judgment,while 9-year-old children used rational trait reasoning.The degree of using rational trait reasoning has significantly improved after 6-years-old.Under the condition of behavioral evidence,4-year-old children used heuristic judgment,while 5-and 6-year-old children used rational trait reasoning in the knowledge-based task.Nigh-year-old children adopted absolute-rationality judgment.Moreover,9-year-old children adopted more rational processes in trait labeling conditions than in behavioral evidence conditions.（2）when the result of reasoning is certain in a knowledge task,4-year-old children,under the condition of behavioral evidence,used rational trait reasoning,while 5-,6-,and 9-year-old children used heuristic judgment.Under the condition of trait label,4-,5-and 6-year-old children adopted the heuristic judgment,while 9-year-old children adopted the rational trait reasoning.Four-to 9-year-old children used more rational processes in trait labeling conditions than in behavioral evidence conditions.（3）When the result of reasoning is uncertain in the intention-based task,4-,5-,6-,and 9-year-old children under the condition of trait label adopted the heuristic judgment in the intention-based task.In addition,the degree of the rational process remained stable from age 4 to age 9.Under the condition of behavioral evidence,4-,5-,and 9-yearold children used the heuristic judgment,while 6-year-old children used the rational trait reasoning.Six-year-old children used more rational processes in behavioral evidence conditions than in trait labeling conditions.（4）When the result of reasoning is certain in the intention-based task,4-,5-,6-,and 9-year-old children adopted the heuristic judgment under the condition of behavioral evidence and trait label.Six-and 9-year-old children used more rational processes than 4-year-old children.The ways of presenting characteristics for informants didn’t affect the degree of rational processes.The cognitive processes of selective trust for preschoolers developed from type Ⅰ processes to type Ⅱ process.So,is this development related to the increase of children’ cognitive abilities? Study2,thus,examined the predictive effects of the domain-general and domain-specific abilities of children on cognitive processes of selective trust.Experiment 5a and 5b adopted eye-tracking measurements as the indicators of attention to investigate the predictive effects of selective attention and attention duration on the cognitive process of knowledge-based and intention-based selective trust in children aged 4-7 respectively.Experiments 6a and 6b investigated the predictive effects of executive function and theory of mind on the cognitive process of knowledge-based and intentionbased selective trust of children aged 4-7 respectively.All experiments in study 2 adopted a single factor（age of children: 4-5 years old,6-7 years old）between-subject design.The results show that（1）selective attention,attention duration,and executive function couldn’t predict the cognitive process of children aged 4-7 in knowledge-based and intention-based selective trust task.（2）Theory of mind could predict the degree of selective trust to the knowledgeable people for 6-7-year-old children in the name judging task and the function judging task.However,it could predict the cognitive processes of knowledge-based and intention-based selective trust for children aged 4-7.Children who can use type Ⅱ processes also used type Ⅰ processes.Is this related to the motivation of children to complete the task? To test this hypothesis,study 3 investigated the effect of rewardinduced motivation on the cognitive processes of selective trust in children aged 4-7.Experiment 7and Experiment 7 b adopted a two-factor between-subject design to investigate the effect of reward on the cognitive processes of selective trust for children aged 4-7.The results show that（1）in the knowledge-based task,children aged 4-to 5-and 6-to 7-year-old adopted heuristic judgment in knowledge-based selective trust tasks when there was no reward information.When there was reward information,children aged 4-7 adopted rational trait reasoning.Moreover,children aged 4-7 used rational processes more than those without rewards.（2）In the intention-based task,4-to 7-year-old children used heuristic judgment when there was reward information or not.Moreover,the reward didn’t affect the degree of using rational processes.Why did the reward not affect the degree of rational processes for children in intention-based tasks? Is this related to the stage of providing reward information? Experiments 8 a and 8 b,thus,adopted a 2（stages of providing rewards: before and after learning characteristics）×2（children age: 4-5 years old and 6-7 years old）two-factor betweensubject design to investigate the effect of the stages providing rewards on the cognitive process of knowledge-based and intention-based selective trust for children aged 4-7 respectively.The results show that（1）in the knowledge-based task,4-to 5-year-old and 6-to 7-year-old used rational trait reasoning when provided reward information before learning informant characteristics.When rewarding information was provided after learning informant characteristics,4-to 5-year-old children used heuristic judgment,while 6-to 7-year-olds used absolute-rationality judgment.The stage of providing reward information didn’t affect the degree of rational process.（2）In the intention-based task,4-to 5-year-old children adopted heuristic judgment in both conditions.Whereas providing reward information after learning informant characteristics guided 4-to 7-year-old children to make more rational trait reasoning than providing reward information before learning the characteristics of informants.The following conclusions are drawn under the conditions of the current research.（1）The decision-making level of preschoolers’ selective trust develops from heuristic judgment to rational reasoning.However,children also use heuristic judgment after preschool age.The rational processes of selective trust developed earlier in the knowledge-based task of selective trust and developed later in the intention-based task of selective trust.The trait labels of knowledge help children trust reliable people more than the behavioral evidence of knowledge and encourage children to use the rational processes more.On the contrary,the trait labels of intention restrain children from trusting reliable people more than the behavior evidence of intention and inhibit children from using the rational processes more.The cognitive load on tasks deriving a certain conclusion is higher than that of tasks that can’t derive a certain conclusion.Therefore,it inhibits the ability of children to use rational processes.（2）The selective attention,attention duration,and executive function may not be the mainly cognitive basis of children’s cognitive processes for selective trust based on knowledge and intention.Theory of mind is the cognitive basis of children’s selective trust based on knowledge.Whereas it may not be the primary basis of children’s cognitive processes for selective trust based on knowledge and intention.（3）What cognitive processes children use is restricted by their motivation to complete tasks.Providing awards to children aged 4-7 promotes their rational processes in knowledge-based selective trust.At the same time,the stage of providing awards also affects the cognitive processes for the selective trust of children.Rewarding information provided after learning informant characteristics promotes children aged 4-7 to use more rational processes than rewarding information provided before learning informant characteristics. |
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