The Influence Of Authority Status And Argument Types On 3-5-year-old Children's Selective Trust

In the complex information in the outside world,people need to screen and select the information,so as to acquire effective information for learning.Selective trust refers to the ability of individuals to discriminate the testimonies of different information providers according to cognitive clues or social clues in the face of an unfamiliar thing,so as to selectively trust more reliable information providers.Early childhood is an important stage of individual cognitive development.The research on the characteristics of children's trust in this period is helpful to cultivate children's socialization behavior and enhance their social adaptability.Studies have found that 3-year-old children already have the ability of selective trust,and they can make trust judgments based on various characteristics of information providers.However,few previous studies have focused on the influence of different authority identities on children's selective trust.At the same time,under the domestic background culture,the research on children's trust tendency to different argument types has not been involved.In addition,how to make a balance between the authority status of information provider and the type of argument is still to be discussed.In this study,215 children in Shanghai were selected as research objects,and the classic object naming paradigm was adopted to explore the influence of children's age,authority status of information providers and argument types on the selective trust ability of children aged 3-5 years.This study is divided into three parts: study one discusses the influence of two different authority identities of teachers and peers on the selective trust of children aged 3-5 years;Study 2 discusses the tendency of children aged 3-5 years to trust circular and non-circular arguments.On the basis of the existing results of study 1 and study 2,study 3 further explores how children aged 3-5 make trust judgment and the influence of children's age on selective trust when the authority status of information provider is in conflict with the type of argument.Through three studies,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)the authoritative identity of information provider affects children's selective trust behavior.In the two different authority status of teacher and peer,children aged 3-5 are more inclined to choose to trust the teacher.(2)argument types of information providers affect children's selective trust behavior.In the two different types of arguments,circular arguments and non-circular arguments,children aged 3-5 years are more likely to choose the testimony supported by circular arguments.(3)under the condition that the authority identity of the information provider is in conflict with the argument type,children aged 4 and 5 are inclined to make trust judgment based on the argument type of the information provider,while children aged 3 are not inclined to trust.The selective trust ability of 4-and 5-year-old children was significantly higher than that of 3-year-old children.(4)age affects children's selective trust behavior,and children's selective trust ability will develop with age.At 3 years of age,the development of children's selective trust ability is embryonic,at 4 years of age,it is transitional,and at 5 years of age,it tends to be stable.